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Dietary intakes of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids from ready-to-eat vegetables in taiwan

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 33, pages 824–830 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Chlorine-based disinfectants are often used to sanitize fruit and vegetables to produce a product called ready-to-eat (RTE) vegetables. During the disinfection process, disinfection byproducts (DBPs), such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), might be formed via chlorination.

Objective

To determine the amounts of DBPs that occur in RTE vegetables in Taiwan, an analytical method which can detect THMs and HAAs simultaneously was developed for this study.

Methods

For HAAs, dimethyl sulfate (DMS) was first added into the sample as derivatization reagent and tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate (TBA-H2SO4) was used as the ion-pairing agent to improve the derivatization process. Afterwards, the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) procedure coupled with gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometers (GC/MS/MS) was performed to measure the HAAs derivatives and THMs in the sample.

Results

A total of 92 single RTE ingredients were analyzed in this study. Among various THMs and HAAs, the results showed that dibromochloromethane (21%) and dichloroacetic acid (12%) had the highest detection rates, respectively. Compared with fruits, vegetables were more easily to contain DBPs. For adults in Taiwan, the maximum daily exposure of THMs and HAAs estimated via the consumption of RTE vegetables were 28.53 and 77.83 μg, respectively.

Significance

The findings from this study suggest that the exposure of DBPs from RTE vegetables is an important food safety issue in Taiwan.

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Fig. 1: The effect of extraction time.
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Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information file.

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Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST108-2314-B-002-139-MY3), Executive Yuan, Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Food Safety and Health, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, No. 17, Xuzhou Road, Taipei, 100, Taiwan

    Ai-Hua Lin & Shih-Wei Tsai

  2. Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, No. 17, Xuzhou Road, Taipei, 100, Taiwan

    Shih-Wei Tsai

Authors
  1. Ai-Hua Lin
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  2. Shih-Wei Tsai
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Contributions

Both of A-HL and S-WT contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shih-Wei Tsai.

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Lin, AH., Tsai, SW. Dietary intakes of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids from ready-to-eat vegetables in taiwan. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 33, 824–830 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-022-00465-2

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