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Are Food Processing Plants an Environmental Source of Phytoestrogens and Mycotoxins?
Citation:
Kolpin, D., L. Hubbard, B. Blackwell, N. Evans, C. Givens, E. MedlockKakaley, K. Romanok, K. Smalling, Dan Villeneuve, AND V. Wilson. Are Food Processing Plants an Environmental Source of Phytoestrogens and Mycotoxins? Natural Toxins: Environmental Fate and Safe Water Supply Meeting, Virtual, Virtual, September 24 - 25, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Natural toxins can pose varying degrees of risk towards ecosystems and even human health. “Natural Toxins: Environmental Fate and Safe Water Supply” is the first international conference focusing solely on the topic of natural compounds affecting the quality of our water resources and drinking water. This presentation will provide recent findings on microbial and natural estrogenic compounds detected in various types of food processing plant effluent. Contaminant measurement was completed using a variety of targeted and non-targeted screening tools. Comparisons and correlations between method detection data sets will be provided.
Description:
Abstract for invited platform presentation at NaToxAq Meeting 2020. ABSTRACT: Food, beverage, and feedstock processing plants transform raw agricultural materials into a variety of food ingredients and final products. Many are National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitted facilities discharging to the environment. Nevertheless, these plants are an under-investigated potential source of chemical and microbial contaminants to the environment. In 2018, effluent samples from 23 food processing plants (e.g. meat, seafood, fruit and vegetable, dairy, brewery/distillery operations, and ethanol production) were sampled from 17 states across the U.S. and analyzed for more than 530 target organic chemicals (e.g. natural toxins, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and volatile organic chemicals). Effluent extracts were additionally screened for activity of approximately 70 biological endpoints using Attagene FactorialTM assays and also in dose response in endocrine pathway specific transcriptional activations assays. More than 170 chemicals were detected at least once in the 23 food processing plant effluents collected. At least one natural toxin was detected in 48% of the sites (11 sites: five meat, three beverage, one vegetable canning, one cheese, and one ethanol processing plant) with one to three natural toxins detected in these effluent samples. The most frequently detected natural toxin was genistein (22%, phytoestrogen) followed by daidzein (17%, phytoestrogen), zearalenone (13%, mycotoxin), equol (9%, phytoestrogen), formononetin (9%, phytoestrogen), beauvericin (4%, mycotoxin), biochanin A (4%, phytoestrogen), and α-zearalanol (4%, mycotoxin). Detected natural toxin concentrations, however, were generally low with 89% of the detections being between 1 and 10 ng/L. Initial results indicate food/feedstock production effluents represent a potential source of natural toxins to receiving surface waters. In addition, the measured natural toxins are included in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast) database of chemical-biological interactions. A comparison between concentration and bioassay results (e.g. total estrogenicity) will be conducted to determine if a statistical relation exits between natural toxin concentration and biological activity of the effluent samples collected.