# Advanced Analysis Techniques of Food Contaminants and Risk Assessment--Editorial
## 2 Review of Special Issue Contents  
This Special Issue features eight original documents dealing with new analytical methods and their use for monitoring contaminants in food. These articles highlight how essential is to verify the presence of treatment residues, such as pesticides and veterinary drug residues, and of contaminants that often develop under opportune environmental and food storage conditions, such as biogenic amines, mycotoxins, and others. The present Special Issue also provides practical examples of risk and exposure assessment for different hazards and (populations) countries. Four original articles report new findings in food analytical chemistry. The first paper describes a novel method for the determination of \(\beta\)-agonists in urine samples, developed by combining analyte separation, obtained by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, coupled with pulsed amperometric detection at a glassy carbon electrode. Other than the development of this method and its application to real samples, the authors described the validation procedure and its conformity with the European directives in terms of linearity, selectivity, precision, and recovery. The second paper reports a comparison between two analytical approaches, ELISA and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (UPLC/FLD) for the determination of two important mycotoxins in cereals: T-2 and HT-2 toxins. The authors describe the approach used to compare the two methods, developed by taking into account both the results obtained by analyzing 100 cereal samples and the validation parameters (sensitivity, linearity, selectivity, precision, and ruggedness). The authors conclude that the combination of both approaches is very effective for official control activities of cereals and derived products. The third analytical document focuses on a highly selective, sensitive, and reliable method for the simultaneous determination of 13 insecticides in vegetables. This method is based on a pre-concentration of analytes, obtained by a three-dimensional microporous reduced graphene oxide/polypyrrole nanotube/magnetic hydrogel (3D-rGOPFH) synthesized as a magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) sorbent. The analytical determination, by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, is validated in terms of sensitivity and accuracy, representing an effective novel tool for determining multiple classes of insecticide residues in vegetables. The last paper describes how the microbial assay for risk assessment (MARA) can be used for ecotoxicological testing in food safety. _Boletus edulis_, one of the most consumed wild mushrooms worldwide, was considered in this study as it is capable of accumulating many potentially toxic elements. After a comparison/confirmation by instrumental determination of 10 elements (Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn), the authors conclude that the MARA system can be applied for toxic identification if the targeted toxin is highly extractable in water. Four original articles describe surveys of the most significant contaminants in food safety, such as pesticides, histamine, and aflat. The first paper reports the evaluation of cereal-based product contamination by pesticide residues. The authors used a validated multi-residual analytical method based on gas chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry coupled with a rapid QuECHERS procedure. This method is used for the determination of 37 pesticides (pyrethroids, organophosphorus, and organochlorine compounds) in 209 commercially available samples of cereals and 11 legumes placed on the Italian market in 2018 and 2019. The results confirm that there are no trace of pesticides in legume samples, while 18 cereal samples are contaminated by at least one pesticide. However, none of these residues exceeded the maximum level demanded by the European Regulations. The second monitoring was carried in freshwater fish (carp) and the related contamination by DDT and DDT metabolites was evaluated.