## 1 Introduction  
Atropine and scopolamine are two natural toxins from the tropane alkaloid (TA) family that are of great concern due to reports of their occurrence in food poisoning events [1; 2; 3; 4; 5]. TAs are a large family of alkaloids consisting of more than 200 identified molecules [6; 7]. These secondary metabolites with anticholinergic effects occur in different plant families, most notably the Solanaceae family [8; 9; 10]. However, these toxins also occur in some species of other families, such as Brassicaceae, Convolvulaceae, and Erythroxylaceae. Symptoms of poisoning depend on the amount consumed but are often due to acute toxicity and range from tachycardia, ataxia, and hallucinations to coma or even death due to overdose. The population is exposed to these natural toxins through food, usually of plant origin, although some studies have reported the transfer of TAs to animal foods, such as honey and milk [3; 8]. Cereals and pseudocereals are the most contaminated foods [11; 12; 13; 14; 15], followed by teas, herbal teas [16; 17; 18; 19; 20], species [21], honey [22; 23], and vegetables [24; 25]. Furthermore, over the past few years, the European Rapid Alert System for the Food and Feed (RASFF) portal has reported numerous alerts on different foodstuffs contaminated by TA-producing plants, such as _Atropa belladonna_, _Datura stramonium_, _Mandragora_, _Hyoscyamus niger_, and _Solanum nigrum_[3; 26]. Contamination is caused by co-harvested weeds that produce these toxins as they grow between crops, often in more sustainable organic agriculture practices free of pesticides. Popularly, weeds are trawled along with crops during automatic harvesting, resulting in contamination. Awareness of this potential contamination and good manufacturing practices will reduce the risk of mixing toxic and non-toxic plants [3]. However, recently, another route of contamination was proposed [25]. This route involves horizontal transfer through the soil, which has already been proposed for other families of alkaloids, such as pyrrolidine alkaloids (PAs) [27; 28]. Hence, the European Union (EU) has defined maximum limits, generally as the sum of atropine and scopolamine, for certain foods, such as processed and unprocessed cereals and pseudocereals (5-15 ng/g), baby food made from processed cereals and pseudocereals (1 ng/g of atropine and 1 ng/g of scopolamine), dried herbal infusions (25-50 ng/g), and liquid herbal infusions (0.2 ng/g equal to 0.2 ng/mL assuming a density of 1 mg/mL for these beverages) [29]. This regulation entered into force in September 2022, but products legally marketed before this date may remain on the market until their expiration or best-before date. Despite knowledge about the occurrence of these toxins in food and emerging issues related to TA contamination due to weeds growing among food crops, many questions remain unanswered. For example, studies on the occurrence of TAs in food from associated weeds have mainly focused on cereals (i.e., a seed of stramonium in buckwheat), and there are limited data available for other foods, such as teas and herbal teas [3]. High concentrations of atropine and scopolamine have been found in samples of green tea, black tea, chamomile, peppermint, rooibos, coca leaf tea, verbena, fennel, and nettle, among others [1; 16; 17; 20; 21; 30; 31]. However, most of these studies only involved dry samples. Studies that have focused on the transfer rate of atropine and scopolamine from dried plants to infusions showed transfer rates from 20 to 88% for both toxins [1; 21; 32]. This wide variation in the transfer rates can be lower due to poor extraction efficiency and eventually because of the heat sensitivity of TAs. Therefore, analysis of liquid infusions is needed to obtain realistic data about TA intake through these beverages. Perhaps atropine and scopolamine should be controlled together with other toxins, such as PAs and other TAs that may appear in this type of sample [4].