## 3 Results and Discussion
### Effects on Toxicity  
Atmospheric cold plasma may affect the chemical and nutritional properties of food. Thus, a proper risk assessment of ADCP treatment needs to be performed to ensure food safety [13]. To investigate the toxicological safety of ADCP treatment, acute and subacute toxicity tests were conducted with respect to hematological and blood biochemical parameters. No deaths or clinical signs related to local or systemic toxic effects were observed during and after acute and subacute exposure periods. ADCP-treated CBCs did not show a significant difference in terms of changes in weight gain of Sprague-Dawley rats and food intake, compared to the control (Table 3; \(p>0.05\)). The evaluation of hematological parameters using whole blood (Table 3) found no significant difference across all parameters between the control and ADCP-treated CBCs (\(p>0.05\)), and an identical pattern was observed in both acute and subacute tests. The hematopoietic system is generally the most sensitive target of toxic substances, and thus, it is an important parameter in evaluating human and animal physiological and pathological statuses [38]. These results demonstrated that ADCP-treated CBCs were essentially nontoxic, suggesting that ADCP treatment does not generate harmful by-products in CBCs. The changes in serum following oral administering to experimental samples, are presented (Table 4). Biochemical parameters of blood, which were used in this study, included certain enzymes and protein levels. aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, and total bilirubin act as indicators of hepatocellular damage, while the levels of blood urea nitrogen and creatine act as biomarkers of nephrotoxicity [39]. Acute toxicity tests indicated that all blood biochemical parameters showed no significant difference between female rats administered ADCP-treated CBCs and the control (\(p>0.05\)), except that blood urea nitrogen and triglyceride levels for ADCP-treated CBCs were slightly lower than that of the control. In addition, no significant differences were observed between parameters of ADCP-treated CBCs of male rats and those of the control (\(p>0.05\)), except for the levels of total protein and albumin. However, changes in total protein and albumin values were surmised to be toxicologically irrelevant, because the values remained within physiologically normal ranges, despite statistical differences. Similarly, subacute toxicity tests indicated that there were no significant differences between the parameters of ADCP-treated CBCs of male and female rats and those of the controls (\(p>0.05\)), except for the levels of total bilirubin in female rats and the levels of total bilirubin and total protein in male rats. Furthermore, because changes in the values of total bilirubin and total protein were physiologically within normal ranges despite statistical differences, these changes were considered as toxicologically irrelevant. Similarly, [PERSON] et al. reported that, according to the toxicity tests assessing microwave cold plasma treatment of edible defatted soybean meal-based film, the clinical differences between hematological and blood biochemical parameters were not significantly different as their levels were within normal physiological ranges, although changes were observed in the levels of some components (hemoglobin and hematocrit in hematological parameters and total bilirubin, aspartate aminotransferase, and creatinine in biochemical parameters) [13].