Analysis and risk assessment of furan in coffee products targeted to adolescents

Abstract

The aim of this work was to analyse the furan concentrations in coffee products targeted to adolescents and to estimate the health risk for those consumers by using the consumption data of the Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed Study (DONALD). Three different kinds of coffee beverages were analysed: ‘coffee ready to drink’ (i.e. industrially manufactured and packaged products available in cans or plastic cups), ‘coffee instant’ (i.e. soluble coffee in powder form) and ‘coffee from coffee chains’ (i.e. freshly prepared coffee sampled on-site). Furan was analysed according to the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) method using headspace-GC-MS and quantification with standard addition. The lowest furan concentrations were found within the category ‘coffee instant’, with an average of 4.6 µg kg⁻¹, followed by the category ‘coffee ready to drink’, with an average of 41.3 µg kg⁻¹, while the products from the coffee chains showed the highest concentrations, on average 100.5 µg kg⁻¹. According to the obtained furan contents, it seems that the highest furan exposure for adolescents is generally given in the consumption of products within the category ‘coffee from coffee chains’, while the lowest is given in the category ‘coffee instant’. Risk assessment based on the margin of exposure (MOE) approach showed that in different consumption scenarios except for consumers of instant coffee, the MOE lay below 10,000, a range that is judged to be of public health relevance. The lowest MOE was found for consumers in the age group 10–12 years (especially females) and for both sexes in the age group 16–18 years.

Keywords:

• coffee
• processed foods
• process contaminants
• volatiles
• chromatography – GC/MS
• chromatography – headspace
• exposure
• risk assessment

Acknowledgments

H. Mann and H. Havel are thanked for excellent technical assistance.