Heavy metals (HMs) from smelters pose severe challenges to the environmental soil quality of surrounding farmlands, and threaten human health through the food chain. This study explored the ...environmental effects of smelting activities on farmland soil, and additionally assessed the enrichment, transfer and health risk of HMs in soil-wheat systems. Multiple characterization results were combined to demonstrate that HMs from smelter waste were transferred to the surrounding soil. It was determined that the enrichment of HMs in soil-wheat systems is mainly controlled by the total HM concentration and pH in soil. Furthermore, the priority pollutant in soil-wheat systems was found to be Cd, and Cd affected the transfer of Cu, Mn and Pb from soil to wheat roots. Interestingly, the -OH stretching, C-H stretching, N-H amide and C-O bending were involved in detoxifying HMs in wheat. The mean values of non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks by consuming wheat grain were 9.1, 1.4E-02 (adults) and 11.3, 3.3E-03 (children), respectively, indicating a noteworthy health risk. This study highlighted the critical issues arising from Pb/Zn smelting activities on agricultural soils. Notwithstanding, to ensure food security, the affected regions could opt to follow up on the type of crops grown.
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•Waste particles from smelters are transferred to agricultural soils.•Cd inhibited the transfer of Cu, Mn and Pb from soil to wheat roots.•-OH stretching, C-H stretching, N-H amide, and C-O bending are involved in detoxifying heavy metals in wheat.
Food safety training designed systematically to impact the intended target audience is a vital part of maintaining a safe food system. The objective of this systematic review of peer-reviewed studies ...was to assess how current food safety training programs analyzed the needs of the target audience and how those trainings were designed, developed, implemented, and evaluated. The goal was to identify training design strategies that effectively impact safe food handling behaviors of food processors. Twenty-three peer reviewed studies evaluating the impact of food safety training on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of food handlers were identified and included in this study. Twenty-two (5/23) percent of the studies reported performing a needs analysis prior to developing training, mainly to gather demographic data on the target audience. The majority of the interventions were face-to-face (83%, 19/23), followed a behaviorist framework (52%, 12/23) and lasted less than 8 h (43%, 10/23; 30%, 7/23 did not report length of training). Little information was reported on which tools were used to develop training. The evaluation design for the majority of the training programs followed an uncontrolled before and after design (65%, 15/23), 9% (2/23) were non-randomized controlled trials, and 26% (6/23) were randomized controlled trials. All of the studies included in this review evaluated one, two, or all three of the key learning outcomes, i.e., knowledge (83%, 19/23), attitudes (30%, 7/23), and behaviors (70%, 16/23). It was impossible to compare the effectiveness of the training interventions to each other due to high bias and the fact that not all were evaluated using the same methods. However, it appeared that training did have the greatest impact on knowledge and a lesser impact on attitudes and behaviors. Few studies reported performing follow-up testing to measure retention. The results of this study indicate that a systematic approach is not being taken in designing most food safety training. If food safety training programs are developed in a more systematic way, and evaluations are performed to at least Kirkpatrick Level 3, it appears there is potential for that training to become more impactful with regard to positive changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. A discussion and illustration of how training fits into the Food Safety Culture Maturity Model was provided.
Foodborne pathogens such as Listeria spp. contain the ability to survive and multiply in poultry farming environments, which provides a route of contamination for poultry processing environments and ...final poultry products. An understanding of the effect of meteorological variables on the prevalence of Listeria spp. in the farming environment is lacking. Soil and feces samples were collected from 11 pastured poultry farms from 2014 to 2017. Random forest (RF) and gradient boosting machine (GBM) predictive models were generated to describe and predict Listeria spp. prevalence in feces and soil samples based on meteorological factors at the farming location. This study attempted to demonstrate the use of GBM models in a food safety context and compare their use to RF models. Both feces models performed very well, with area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.905 and 0.855 for the RF and GBM models, respectively. The soil GBM model outperformed the RF model with AUCs of 0.873 and 0.700, respectively. The developed models can be used to predict the prevalence of Listeria spp. in pastured poultry farm environments and should be of great use to poultry farmers, producers, and risk managers.
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•Environmental samples were evaluated from poultry farms for Listeria prevalence.•Listeria prevalence can be predicted by machine learning models based on weather.•Wind speed, temperature, and humidity affect Listeria spp. prevalence.•This study provides a framework for future use of machine learning in food safety.
Carbendazim (CBZ) is a widely used pesticides, and its excessive intake is serious damage to humans and animals. Herein, a stable and sensitive colorimetric aptasensor for rapid detection of CBZ ...residue has been established based on the enhancement of CBZ-specific aptamer (CZ-13) on oxidase-mimicking activity of octahedral Ag2O nanoparticles (NPs). The CZ-13 aptamer can significantly increase the catalytic activity by promoting the production of superoxide anion (·O2−) on the surface of Ag2O NPs and enhancing the affinity of octahedral Ag2O NPs to 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) molecules. In the presence of CBZ, the quantity of CZ-13 aptamer will be exhausted due to the specific binding to CBZ pesticide. Thus, the rest CZ-13 aptamer no longer enhanced the catalytic activity of octahedral Ag2O NPs, which leads to the change in color of sensing solution. The color change of sensing solution can be easily converted to the corresponding RGB value by a smartphone for quantitative and rapid detection of CBZ. The designed aptasensor has excellent sensitivity and specificity, and the limit of detection was determined as low as 7.35 μg L−1 for CBZ assay. Besides, the aptasensor exhibited good recoveries in the spiked cabbage, apple and cucumber, showing that it may have broad application prospects for detecting CBZ residues in agriculture products.
The enhancement effect and mechanism of CZ-13 aptamer on the oxidase-mimicking catalytic activity of octahedral Ag2O nanoparticles was revealed, which enable to establish a colorimetric aptasensor for rapid detection of carbendazim (CBZ) residues in agricultural products. Display omitted
•The enhancement of aptamer on oxidase-mimicking activity of Ag2O was revealed.•A smartphone-assisted colorimetric aptasensor is constructed for CBZ detection.•The convenient, on-site and quantitative detection of CBZ residues is realized.•The CBZ aptasensor has the limit of detection as low as 7.35 μg L−1.
The food and environmental samples contaminated with antibiotic residues poses drastic risk to human health. It is believed that the continuous use of destructive chemicals cause numerous health ...problems including allergic reaction, hypertension, temporary loss of vision, headache, muscles pain, and serious hormonal dysfunction. The presence of antibiotics in food and environmental samples has imposed to look for several facile, cost effective and selective analytical tools to detect them at trace level. Molecular imprinting of polymer (MIP) is an artificial recognition technique for selective and specific detection of template molecule from real samples. MIPs are upcoming robust technique that may help in detection of antibiotics without any pre-treatment of samples. Modern MIPs technique has the sensitivity to detect and quantify the antibiotics residues in food and environmental samples because of their predetermined shape and selectivity, sensitivity, easy handling, low cost and recyclability. The review gives an overview about the classification of antibiotics and excessive use of antibiotics to contaminate food. It gives an overview of the health effect of contaminated food, environmental samples and applications of different approaches of molecular imprinting techniques used for detection and isolation of antibiotics in these samples. It also briefs the different methodology adapted for polymer matrix used in MIP and their efficiencies.
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Foodborne antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria such as Campylobacter jejuni, Bacillus cereus, Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio ...cholerae, and Vibrio parahemolyticus can adversely affect animal and human health, but a better understanding of the factors involved in their pathogenesis is needed. To help meet this need, this overview surveys and interprets much of our current knowledge of antibiotic (multidrug)-resistant bacteria in the food chain and the implications for microbial food safety and animal and human health. Topics covered include the origin and prevalence of resistant bacteria in the food chain (dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, and herbal products, produce, and eggs), their inactivation by different classes of compounds and plant extracts and by the use of chlorine and physicochemical methods (heat, UV light, pulsed electric fields, and high pressure), the synergistic antimicrobial effects of combinations of natural antimicrobials with medicinal antibiotics, and mechanisms of antimicrobial activities and resistant effects. Possible areas for future research are suggested. Plant-derived and other safe natural antimicrobial compounds have the potential to control the prevalence of both susceptible and resistant pathogens in various environments. The collated information and suggested research will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of approaches that could be used to minimize the presence of resistant pathogens in animal feed and human food, thus reducing adverse effects, improving microbial food safety, and helping to prevent or treat animal and human infections.
Pesticides, widely used for pest control and plant growth regulation, have posed a threat to the environment and human health. Conventional methods to analyze pesticide residues are not applied to ...resource-limited areas because of their high cost, complexity, and requirements for expensive instruments (such as GC/MS and LC/MS). To address these challenges, herein we fabricated colorimetric nanozyme sensor arrays based on heteroatom-doped graphene for detection of aromatic pesticides. The active sites of nanozymes could be differentially masked when different pesticides were adsorbed on the graphene, which in turn resulted in the decrease of their peroxidase-mimicking activities. On the basis of this principle, five pesticides (i.e., lactofen, fluoroxypyr-meptyl, bensulfuron-methyl, fomesafen, and diafenthiuron) from 5 to 500 μM were successfully discriminated by the sensor arrays. In addition, discrimination for different concentrations of each pesticide and different ratios of two mixed pesticides were also demonstrated. The practical application of the sensor arrays was further validated by successfully discriminating the pesticides in soil samples. This work not only provides a facile and cost-effective method to detect pesticides but also makes a positive contribution to food safety and environmental protection.
Rapid industrialization in China during the last three decades has resulted in widespread contamination of Cd in agricultural soils. A considerable proportion of the rice grain grown in some areas of ...southern China has Cd concentrations exceeding the Chinese food limit, raising widespread concern regarding food safety. In this review, we summarize rice grain Cd concentrations in national Chinese markets and in field surveys from contaminated areas, and analyze the potential health risk associated with increased dietary Cd intake. For subsistence rice farmers living in some contaminated areas of southern China who mainly consume locally-produced Cd-contaminated rice, their estimated dietary Cd intake is now comparable to that for the population in the region of Japan where the Itai-Itai disease was first reported. Interventions must be taken urgently to reduce Cd intake for these farmers. We also analyze i) the main reasons causing elevated grain Cd concentrations in southern China, ii) the dominant biogeochemical processes controlling the solubility of Cd in paddy soils, and iii) molecular mechanisms for the uptake and translocation of Cd in rice plants. Based on these analyses, we propose a number of countermeasures to address soil Cd contamination, including i) mitigation of Cd transfer from paddy soils to rice grain, and ii) intervention in those farmers who consume home-grown Cd-contaminated rice. Liming to increase soil pH to 6.5 and gene editing biotechnology are effective strategies to decrease Cd accumulation in rice grain. For these local farmers with high-Cd exposure risk, local governments should monitor the Cd concentration in their home-grown rice and exchange those high-Cd rice with low-Cd rice in order to reduce their dietary Cd intake.
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•We review the status of Cd contamination in soils and rice grain in China.•We summarize the biogeochemical processes and molecular tools to produce Cd-safe rice.•We propose a number of countermeasures to tackle soil Cd contamination.•Interventions are required for the local farmers consuming Cd-contaminated rice.
This review analyzes the current status of Cd contamination in agricultural soils and rice grain in China and proposes strategies to tackle this issue, including mitigation and intervention measurements.
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•A novel dual-competitive lateral flow aptasensor (LFA) was first developed for aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) detection.•The LFA reached high sensitivity for AFB1 with a detection limit of ...0.1ng/mL and a wide linear range of 0.1–1000ng/mL.•The LFA approach was validated with various real food and feedstuffs by a simple aqueous extraction protocol.
A novel dual-competitive lateral flow aptasensor (LFA) benefited from aptamer and lateral flow strips was first designed by using aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) as the model target. In this LFA assay, the target AFB1 competed with AFB1-hapten at T line for binding to Cy5-labeled AFB1 aptamer and the complementary strand competed with the target AFB1 for binding to Cy5-labeled AFB1 aptamer at C line. The ratio of their fluorescent intensities at the T line and C line (ST/SC ratio) was employed in order to increase the sensitivity for target AFB1 detection. This technique has the limit of detection (LOD) of 0.1ng/mL for AFB1 within the linear range from 0.1ng/mL to 1000ng/mL. Subsequently, the LFA approach was validated using 11 kinds of food and feedstuff samples with a simple aqueous extraction protocol. The test results with different naturally contaminated feedstuffs indicated a good correlation between this LFA and a commercial ELISA kit. The assay can be completed within 20min and its sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility are highly satisfactory. This is the first LFA that has been rigorously validated, which will be greatly beneficial to development of commercial aptamer-based biosensors for food safety, environmental analysis, particularly in clinical diagnosis.
Foodborne illness and decay loss caused by microorganisms are primary concerns for processors and marketers of fruits and vegetables. Interest in using gaseous chlorine dioxide (ClO2) treatments for ...postharvest sanitation has increased in recent years due to its many advantages over other sanitizers, including its powerful antimicrobial activity, and low environmental impact. It also has low corrosivity to packing equipment at food sanitation concentrations, but can be corrosive in highly concentrated aqueous solutions. Like many water mediated sanitizers, ClO2 has been applied to various commodities. However, gaseous ClO2 has many advantages over its aqueous formulations in addition to being less corrosive, including ease of mixing with air, rapid diffusion, and the ability to penetrate permeable surfaces and biofilms. A combination of aqueous sanitizer washing and application of gaseous ClO2 will enhance decontamination of both foodborne and plant pathogens. This article compares ClO2 with other commonly used sanitizers, discusses the mechanisms of ClO2 against microorganisms, and focuses intensively on the applications of gaseous ClO2, especially controlled-release ClO2, on fruits and vegetables to reduce pathogen infection and maintain food safety and quality of fresh produce.
•Chlorine dioxide (ClO2) is a powerful sanitizer for postharvest produce use.•Rapid diffusion and penetration to biofilm are the advantages of gaseous ClO2.•Controlled-release ClO2 is applicable for control of microbial growth during storage.•ClO2 is effective in control of both human pathogenic and spoilage organisms.
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