Biomonitoring and food

We are daily exposed to chemicals from our surroundings and an important source is food and drinking together with smoking, consumables and packeging or medicine. The exposure for many harmful compounds such as persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals is primary through the diet. The relationship between the exposure through the diet and the surroundings can be elucidated through biomonitoring. The health effects caused by the chemicals exposed for can be a result of complex interactions between genes and exposure, in cases concerning cancer, neurotoxicity, hormone disturbance and reproducton damaging compounds. However surveillance of essential and non-nutritive health promoting compounds is also important for an overall evaluation of the impact of the exposure of chemicals on the health.

Biomonitoring of the content of polluting chemicals and essential and non-nutritive compounds in food at DTU FOOD is done through development and validation of chemical analytical methods for determination of a wide range of polluting compounds, macro-compounds, essential and non-nutritive trace elements using techniques based on the coupling between chromatography and mass spectrometry: HPLC-ICPMS (organic metallic compounds), HPLC-ESI-MSMS (non-volatile compounds), GS-MS (volatile compounds) and GC-HRMS (Dioxins; PCB and quality assurance/verification).