Risk assessment of perfluoroalkylated substances (PFASs) through the determination of their concentration in various food matrices

Abstract

The presence of emerging environmental pollutants, like perfluoroalkylatedsubstances (PFASs) in food products is one of the main issues for food safety.As the scientific interest on this topic has risen during the last decades, manystudies have focused on the determination of PFASs in food. However, riskassessment of the dietary exposure to PFASs is hampered by the insufficientavailable information and thus further investigation is needed.Thus, the main objective of this study is the risk assessment of PFASs throughtheir detection in different food matrices, drinking water and food packagingmaterials. In the present study, both direct and indirect ways of foodcontamination were examined and evaluated. Human exposure to PFASs via theconsumption of certain food items was also estimated. In order to detect very lowlevels of PFASs in all the aforementioned matrices, sensitive and selectiveanalytical methods were developed.The current thesis, apart from the development of novel analytical methodscomprises of five distinct parts: (1) Determination of perfluorinated compounds(PFCs) in various foodstuff packaging materials used in the Greek market, (2)Levels of perfluorinated compounds in raw and cooked Mediterranean finfish andshellfish, (3) Perfluoroalkylated substances (PFASs) in home and commerciallyproduced chicken eggs from the Netherlands and Greece, (4) Determination ofperfluoroalkylated substances (PFASs) in drinking water from the Netherlandsand Greece, (5) Perfluoralkylated substances in edible livers of farm animals,including accumulation kinetics in young sheep fed with contaminated feed.Hopefully this work will be an important contribution to the particular scientific field being explored, and also the trigger for further investigation of issues thathave been addressed.