UJI researchers develop an innovative technique for the detection of food contaminants



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## UJI researchers develop an innovative technique for the detection of food contaminants A more accurate and effective system with great involvement in food security

19/05/2016 |
SCP

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A more accurate and effective system with great involvement in food security

Researchers at the University Institute of Pesticides and Water (IUPA) at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) have developed an innovative technique for the detection and quantification of contaminants in food samples, mainly of marine origin. The system enables to know the existence of harmful toxic compounds, such as brominated flame retardants, in foods like tuna or prawns, and optimizes the monitoring of the presence of these contaminants, an issue of vital importance for food security.  
  
Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are compounds widely used in a variety of products such as televisions, smart phones, furniture and plastic products in general, in order to reduce its flammability. They are harmful and toxic compounds that are present in food, mainly seafood, since they are introduced into the oceans through waste, residues or discharges from the factories that produce them. As UJI researcher Carlos Sales explains, "These pollutants reach the marine environment and are ingested by fishes and shellfishes. Since they are lipophilic substances, they cannot be excreted: they remain in the fats. Thus, we consume them when we eat a piece of tuna, for example. In this way, these compounds access our organism.  In fact, they have been detected even in breast milk at low concentrations. If concentrations are low, they will not result in an immediate health problem but, at high levels, they are toxic and can cause health problems including carcinogenesis, endocrine disruption and neurological problems. Thus, their monitoring in food is vital”.

For this reason, and to ensure food security, monitoring these compounds in food is essential to ensure that the levels of these contaminants do not exceed the allowable concentration. In this regard, the European Union has carried out different actions to limit or prohibit the use of many of these compounds.  
  
In this context, IUPA researchers, led by Dr. Félix Hernández, have developed an innovative technique that optimizes the monitoring of these compounds in food and environmental samples. The system uses the new source of chemical atmospheric pressure ionization (APCI) for determining these emerging contaminants more effectively than the previous techniques. The new technique is more sensitive; it has detection limits between 10 and 50 times lower and an improved selectivity, thus being a more accurate method with a smaller margin of error.  
  
According to Carlos Sales, "the determination of BFRs and other persistent organic pollutants has been made traditionally using the source of electron ionization (EI) for fragmenting the molecules and generating charged ions that can be detected, because contaminants are neutral. In order to detect them, they have to be loaded. However, this technique sometimes gives rise to identical ions for different compounds, so its selectivity is limited. At the same time, with the electron impact technique it is almost never possible to get to see the whole molecule and it can result in the same fragment for compounds with different numbers of bromine atoms. With the new chemical ionization source that we use, the APCI, instead of directly ionizing molecules, we use a gas (nitrogen) that is being loaded and collides with the molecules that we want to see, thus ionizing them. In other words, the molecule is loaded by the shock, rather than by direct electrical discharge, and then it does not break; that is why we say that this is a soft ionization. It is a more sensitive and selective technique because if we have the whole molecule, we can detect with a greater confidence if there are contaminants in the sample and in what proportion”.

The process developed in this technique is part of the field of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). As explained by UJI researcher, "the compounds of the food sample are extracted with solvents; the extract is purified and it is injected into a gas chromatograph. The compounds are separated in the chromatographic column and then they give a signal in the detector, depending on the concentration in which they are present. To reach these levels of analysis, of parts per billion, it is necessary to use a mass spectrometer as a detector”.  
  
The implementation of this innovative technique has great implications on food security, both to monitor whether there are food lots with a very high concentration of pollutants, in which case they would be recalled, and to monitor that they meet the standards regulated by the European Union. As Sales explains, "the EU first restricts the use of these toxic compounds, but then it has to monitor that they are not being used, because if they are restricted but still occur, their level would be toxic enough to have implications for humans. Then, monitoring is essential, and it is commissioned by the EU to accredited laboratories such as the CSIC in Madrid or the Public Health Agency in Barcelona, ​​with whom we have worked together to carry out this work”.  
  
The methodology developed by IUPA researchers is part of the research line led by Dr. Tania Portolés, a researcher at the Universitat Jaume I with more than ten years of experience on the source of chemical ionization at atmospheric pressure (APCI). This source had already been used by researchers applied to pesticides, dioxins and other pollutants with results of improvement in sensitivity and detection, and is now expanding to new compounds.  
  
Furthermore, the technique would reduce the cost of tests for contaminants because it is more sensitive and selective and it would use only half the materials needed with the previously used techniques and would analyze them at a lower concentration.  
  
The results of the research have been published in different outstanding scientific journals and have led the researchers of the project, Carlos Sales, and doctors Tania Portolés, Joaquim Beltran, Juan Vicente Sancho and Félix Hernández, to publish an interview in *LCGC* magazine, a renowned publication in the field of chromatography.

[Video](http://blogs.uji.es/cienciatv/en/2016/05/19/uji-researchers-develop-an-innovative-technique-for-the-detection-of-food-contaminants/)  
  
**Bibliographic references:**

C. Sales et al., *Anal. Bioanal. Chem.* 408(2), 449–459 (2016):  
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00216-015-9146-8

T. Portolés et al., *Anal.* *Chem.* 87(19), 9892–9899 (2015):  
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.5b02378

T. Portolés et al., *J. Chromatogr.* *A* 1339, 145–53 (2014):  
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021967314003641

T. Portolés et al., *J. Chromatogr.* *A* 1260, 183–192 (2012):  
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021967312011958>

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