Food, feed …..and then workers safety !

If the potential health risks to animals and humans posed by food- and feedborne mycotoxin intoxication have been largely recognized[1]…… the hazard for the workers posed by airborne mycotoxins are less well-known ! However, these dangerous substances justify the assessment of occupational exposure indeed. Methods have been experimentally validated for the most frequently occurring airborne mycotoxins and now proposed with a specific air sampling strategy and a detailed analytical protocol. They meet the criteria required of reproducible and reliable methods for personal workplace sampling in dusty environments and have been adopted to directly measure a minimum air concentration of 0.5 pg.m_3 (aflatoxins) to 1 ng.m_3 (fumonisins). The inhalable dust fraction, which approximates to the airborne particles that enter the nose and mouth during breathing, is collected. As on-line or realtime sampling is unsuitable for occupational measurements, the air sampler had to be reliable for a 8 hour-work shift sampling, small and lightweight to be attached to the worker and commonly used in industry for measuring dust, fibers or moulds in “real-life” sampling conditions.
Measurement results are given and confirm that workers could be exposed when storing, loading, handling or milling contaminated cereals, root vegetables, blends of spices, liquorice powder and pork-based products like French “saucissons”. Airborne mycotoxins during ximenia kernel extraction or waste treatment were also a concern.
Significant airborne particle contamination levels have been detected whereas the commodity contamination was below the regulatory limits. Occupational measurements, relevant to operator awareness raising purposes, aim at assessing the need for future research on the action mechanisms of inhaled mycotoxins.
We still try to improve the user-friendliness of our analytical method by testing the use of multi-mycotoxin immunoaffinity columns and two molecular recognition based-sorbents. We checked whether these possibly miniaturized tools should have constituted an alternative to the cost-effective antibodies-based sorbent that is currently used.[2] In addition, biological monitoring will be approached in a near future as a complementary action to make “your job” safer..[3]