| Summary: | In human health risk assessment, ingestion of food is considered a major route of exposure to many contaminants either caused by industrial or environmental contamination or as a result of production processes. The total amount of an ingested contaminant (intake) doesn´t always reflects the amount that is available to the body, because only a certain amount of the contaminant is bioavailable1. Studies in animals and humans show that oral bioavailability of compounds from food can be significantly different depending on the food source (food product), food processing or food preparation1. In vitro digestion models are widely used to study the structural changes, digestibility, and release of food components under simulated gastrointestinal conditions. In these digestion models, the most frequently used biological molecules are digestive enzymes, bile salts, and mucin. A digestion temperature of 37ºC and a time of 2h are predominantly employed2. However there are considerable differences in the type of experimental parameters measured in the various digestion models. INFOGEST (COST Action FA1005) aims at improving the current scientific knowledge on how foods are disintegrated during digestion and promotes the harmonization of currently used digestion models3. The present study aims to gather and discuss data on the bioaccessibility values of food contaminants (mycotoxins and nitrates) occurring in foodstuffs marketed in the region of Lisbon4,5 in order to contribute to estimate the toxicological risk associated with the consumption of contaminated foodstuffs. Samples were digested using an in vitro digestion model1 and food contaminants analyzed by HPLC before and after the digestion process. Patulin (mycotoxin) bioaccessibility was determined in an artificially contaminated apple juices with bioaccessibility ranging from 19% to 47%. Nitrates (natural contaminant) bioaccessibility was determined in 17 vegetable-based baby foods revealing bioaccessibility ranging from 42% to 159%. These large differences in the bioaccessibily of food contaminants could be attributed to differences in the composition of food matrix. More studies for food contaminants in different food matrix need to be performed to estimate the variability in bioaccessibility and its impact on food toxicology and risk assessment.
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