Threat or treat: Exposure assessment and risk characterisation of chemical contaminants in soft drinks and chocolate bars in various Polish population age groups

In the frame of the European Food Risk Assessment (EU-FORA) fellowship programme, two studies on chemical contaminants in food matrices were carried out in Warsaw, Poland, at the Department of Food Safety and Chemical Analysis, Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology. The first study addressed health concerns about the dietary exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) contamination due to consumption of soft drink by Polish population. BPA is an organic additive used in the production of epoxy resins and polycarbonate plastics and because of this it is used in the internal coating of cans and in plastic bottle production. Depending on several factors, BPA can migrate from these materials to the soft drink and so, it can be ingested by consumers causing hormonal and reproductive disorders. To estimate the Polish population exposure to BPA, several soft drinks belonging to different brands were purchased from a supermarket in the city of Warsaw and analysed. The result of the analysis highlight that mean BPA exposure in the Polish population exceeds the tolerable daily intake proposed by the EFSA scientific opinion, raising health concerns. On the other hand, the second study, focused on cadmium exposure due to chocolate consumption by Polish population, did not raise any health concern. Cadmium is a heavy metal that naturally occurs in its inorganic form in the environment and its presence in chocolate derives only from the cocoa beans and not from contamination during processing. Its accumulation in the human body can create several adverse effects, including renal dysfunction and failure. To estimate the Polish population exposure to cadmium, several chocolate bars were purchased from a supermarket in the city of Warsaw and analysed. The results of the analysis show that cadmium exposure in the Polish population does not exceed the tolerable weekly intake proposed by the EFSA scientific opinion

The polyamine “multiverse” and stress mitigation in crops: A case study with seed priming in quinoa

The importance of polyamines (PAs) in plant growth and development was recognised several decades ago and, since then, their role in cell proliferation, embryogenesis, organogenesis, flowering, fruit development and ripening, etc. has been investigated to a great extent. In more recent years, most of the attention on PAs has been focussed on their functions in biotic and, especially, abiotic stress responses. Exogenous application, transgenic plants over- or under-expressing PA biosynthetic genes, and mutants have been used to unveil their essential contribution to plant tolerance to salinity, drought, chilling, and heavy metal stresses, among others. In parallel, knowledge on their mechanisms of action has increased greatly and it is today evident that PA functions depend upon their ability to (a) bind electrostatically or covalently to numerous compounds thereby modulating membrane, cell wall, nucleic acid, and protein structure and functions, (b) produce hydrogen peroxide via their catabolic pathways, (c) interact with the biosynthetic and signaling pathways of practically all known phyto hormones, and (d) interact with nitric oxide. In this review, a state-of-the-art overview of PA functions in plants and their possible applications in mitigating stress in crop plants is provided. The potential of seed priming with PAs as an economically and environmentally valid approach for enhancing plant tolerance to adverse environmental conditions is discussed and some results from our study on quinoa and salt stress are presented

Screening of ninety herbal products of commercial interest as potential ingredients for phytocosmetics

Elastase and tyrosinase are important targets both for cosmetics and for dermatological disorders. In this work, ninety herbal products were tested as inhibitors of these two enzymes. Eleven extracts resulted strongly active. Four out of them (Camellia sinensis, Ginkgo biloba, Rhodiola rosea, Vitis vinifera) inhibited both enzymes, five (Glycyrrhiza glabra, Ribes nigrum, Rheum officinale, Salvia officinalis, Tilia platyphyllos) were active against tyrosinase only, and two (Ceterach officinarum and Cinnamomum zeylanicum) proved selectively active against elastase. The IC50 ranged from 3.1 to 104.9 \u3bcg/mL and 19.3 to 164.3 \u3bcg/mL, against elastase and tyrosinase, respectively. The most active extracts resulted enriched in flavonoids (from 1.47 to 56.47 mg RE/g of extract) and phenolics (from 37.43 to 123.56 mg GAE/g of extract), indicating also an antioxidant potential. Finally, a positive correlation between enzymatic bioactivities and phenolic content was also established

NMR-based metabolomics for frauds detection and quality control of oregano samples

In this work 1H NMR metabolomics has been employed for quality control of oregano samples. NMR data and morphological analysis (MA) were combined by PCA, obtaining a model able to individuate non-marketable samples, and to distinguish between the two marketable oregano species (Origanum vulgare and O. onites) on the basis of their metabolomic profile. Through this approach distinctive biomarkers of the two species were found, namely apigenin and p-cymene for O. onites, and salvianolic acid B for O. vulgare. Furthermore, the percentage of the samples’ impurity (evaluated by MA) and the metabolomic profiles were correlated by OPLS models, which showed that, in addition to the species-specific biomarkers, thymol and rosmarinic acid (common to both marketable species) strongly correlate to oregano degree of purity. Cistus was one of the most frequent contaminants, thus, a further OPLS model, able to detect the degree of cistus contamination in oregano samples, was also built