Chemical safety of food products: problems and solutions (literature review)

Introduction. Chemical pollutants in food affect human health, which is becoming a very serious health problem and corresponds to the third UN Sustainable Development Goal, which aims to significantly reduce diseases caused by chemical pollution by 2030.

The purpose of the study was to identify, according to the scientific literature, priority problems of contamination of food products with chemical contaminants, which are currently of scientific and practical importance, and to outline ways to solve them.

Material and methods. A scientific review of studies in Russian and English was carried out using the information portals eLIBRARY.ru, Science Direct, PubMed and Scopus. The search was conducted using the keywords “current problems of chemical food safety”, “chemical contaminants of food”, “pesticides”, “nitrates”, “mycotoxins”, “persistent organic pollutants”, “phycotoxins”, “new food source”.

Results. It has been established that the current problems of chemical safety of food products include their contamination with pesticide residues, nitrites and nitrates, mycotoxins, toxic elements, persistent organic pollutants. One of the problems is the detection and identification of emergent and modified (masked) mycotoxins. Seafood may contain dangerous substances – phycotoxins. Phycotoxins can cause both acute poisoning and long-term negative effects, including carcinogenic. Food packaging can also be a source of contamination of food products. Microplastics should be considered as a new growing contaminant of food products. The emergence of new types of food represents a modern problem of chemical safety. The problem of falsification and detection of substances not declared in the labeling is still relevant.

Conclusions. Ensuring the chemical safety of food products can be achieved by improving the regulatory and methodological framework for assessing the safety and quality control of food products. This also includes monitoring the contamination of food raw materials and food products with chemical contaminants, assessing the risk of exposure to new contaminants and developing highly sensitive methods for their detection and identification, including rapid testing.

Limitations. The study is limited to the study of open literature sources when describing problems related to chemical safety of food products.

Compliance with ethical standards. The study does not require the submission of the conclusion of the biomedical ethics committee or other documents.

Аuthors’ сontribution:
Rusakov V.N. – the concept and design of the study, collection and processing of material, writing text; editing;
Setko A.G. – writing text; editing;
Nemova O.A. – editing.
All authors are responsible for the integrity of all parts of the manuscript and the approval of the final version of the article.

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding. The study had no sponsorship.

Accepted: October 15, 2024 / Revised: February 28, 2025 / Accepted: February 28, 2025 / Published: April 30, 2025

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