Chemical Contaminations in Food

Dear Colleagues,

Besides contributing to the essential human biological needs, food is one important contributor to human well-being, in terms of social life and culture. From farm to fork, food undergoes a complex chain of unit operations, during which chemical contamination of food can arise.

Chemical contamination of foodstuffs occurs along the food chain, contributing to human exposure to a myriad of contaminants entering the food chain during the production and processing of foodstuffs, or originating in the environment either naturally or as a result of pollution, with serious repercussions on human health.

Food safety is a public health priority, and it is important to provide scientific assessments on chemical contaminants to understand the potential hazards, assuring the safety of food supplies and managing health risks for protecting human health under the umbrella of the One Health approach. Above all, it is critical to ensure that there is no unacceptable risk to consumers in an increasingly complex international food system due to the global food challenges in the 21st century.

Thus, this Special Issue addresses the challenge of food chemical contamination, a shared responsibility of all food business operators, regulators, researchers, and academics. It welcomes studies that report contaminant occurrence data in the food chain; perform human exposure assessments through food consumption data and human biomonitoring including risk evaluation of food contaminants, with special attention devoted to vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant women, and the elderly; and describe new analytical methodologies to determine food contaminants in food matrices and biological fluids. Critical reviews on the current and future challenges posed by food contaminants in the global food system, their risk for consumers, impacts on the agri-food industry and on the global food security and global trade, the relationship between food production and sustainability, and regulatory issues and their importance in the risk management strategies are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Angelina Lopes Simoes Pena
Prof. Dr. Sofia Cancela Duarte
Guest Editors

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• food production
• food safety
• food security
• food contaminants
• packaging
• regulation
• risk assessment
• risk management