POP levels in beans from Mediterranean and tropical areas.

Background: Despite the importance of beans as food, few studies are conducted to control their contamination by persistent organic pollutants (POPs), compounds of great importance because of their toxicity and tendency to accumulate in food chains. In order to evaluate the human exposure to POPs by the consumption of beans a monitoring programme was conducted on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) residues in samples coming from Italy, Mexico, India, Japan, Ghana and Ivory Coast. All beans were extracted with an accelerated solvents extractor in triplicate; the clean-up step was done with a Florisil column; identification and quantification was carried out using a TSQ Quantum XLS Ultra GC-MS/MS in selected reaction monitoring mode.

Results: Results revealed concentrations of ∑PAHs ranged from 7.31 µg kg to 686 µg kg , ∑PCBs between 1.85 µg kg and 43.1 µg kg and ∑OCPs ranged from 1.37 µg kg to 71.8 µg kg .

Conclusion: Our results showed that beans coming from Ivory Coast are the most exposed to the risk of contamination by all the pollutants investigated. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.