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Concentration and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in commercial tea and coffee samples marketed in Iran

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Abstract

The aim of the current study was to evaluate the probabilistic health risk and the concentration of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in commercial tea and coffee samples. For determining the mentioned contaminants in sixty-four samples, a reliable and sensitive technique was validated and developed. The technique is established on magnetic solid-phase extraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis (MSPE/GC–MS). The maximum mean of ƩPAHs in coffee samples was 13.75 ± 2.90 μg kg−1, while the minimum mean ƩPAHs in tea samples was 4.77 ± 1.01 μg kg−1. The mean concentration of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) in samples ranged from 0.64 to 2.07 μg kg−1 which was lower than that of standard levels (10 μg kg−1) established by the European Union (EU). The Monte Carlo simulation results showed that the actual target hazard quotient (THQ) for the adult and children was equal to 1.63E-04 and 1.67E-04, respectively; hence, non-carcinogenic health risk for consumers is negligible. The result of actual incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) was lower than the limits of safe risk (1E-4), indicating no notable possibility of cancer risk due to the digestion of tea and coffee for children and adults. Therefore, it can be concluded that the amount of contamination of popular commercial coffee and tea available in the Iranian market with PAHs is often similar to that found in other countries and was lower than the standard of EU. Thus, the processing conditions of these products must be controlled to prevent the formation of PAHs due to the suspicion of carcinogenicity and mutation.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

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Funding

The current research was supported by Shahroud University of medical sciences. We hereby acknowledge the research deputy for Grant No 9805.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Health Related Social and Behavioral Sciences Research, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran

    Aliakbar Roudbari & Mehri Delvarianzadeh

  2. Department of Physics, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Roshanak Rafiei Nazari

  3. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nabi Shariatifar & Mojtaba Moazzen

  4. Food Safety Research Center (salt), School of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

    Anna Abdolshahi

  5. School of Medicine, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran

    Solmaz Mirzamohammadi

  6. Vice-chancellery of food and drug, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran

    Solmaz Mirzamohammadi, Masoumeh Madani-Tonekaboni & Majid Arabameri

Authors
  1. Aliakbar Roudbari
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  2. Roshanak Rafiei Nazari
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  3. Nabi Shariatifar
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  4. Mojtaba Moazzen
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  9. Majid Arabameri
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Conceptualization was done by Mojtaba Moazzen and Aliakbar Roudbari. Data curation was done by Aliakbar Roudbari and Roshanak Rafiei Nazari. Formal analysis was performed by Majid Arabameri and Nabi Shariatifar. Investigation was done by Anna Abdolshahi, Solmaz Mirzamohammadi, and Masoumeh Madani-Tonekaboni. Methodology was performed by Nabi Shariatifar, Mojtaba Moazzen, Masoumeh Madani-Tonekaboni, and Mehri Delvarianzadeh. Project administration was done by Majid Arabameri and Nabi Shariatifar. Resources were prepared by Roshanak Rafiei Nazari and Masoumeh Madani-Tonekaboni. Software was done by Majid Arabameri and Nabi Shariatifar. Supervision was done by Majid Arabameri and Nabi Shariatifar. Validation was done by Mojtaba Moazzen and Majid Arabameri. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Majid Arabameri.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

Human and animal participants were not included in this study. But, according to the necessary considerations, it has ethics approval number. The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Human Research Ethics committee of the Shahroud University of medical sciences (Ethics approval number: IR.SHMU.REC.1398.020).

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Roudbari, A., Rafiei Nazari, R., Shariatifar, N. et al. Concentration and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in commercial tea and coffee samples marketed in Iran. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 4827–4839 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10794-0

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