Feeds and Corresponding Footprints of Residual Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Polychlorinated Biphenyls Based on Their Constituents

Food safety is central to any society, having important economic, social, and environmental implications. International comparisons have shown that the European Union is the world's largest producer of food and drink products. It is not surprising therefore that the Agro-food sector has major importance/influence on the economy of Europe. The first link in the agro-food chain is animal feed, and therefore the risks associated to them, as is the case of the distribution of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), are of paramount importance. Simple, fast, quantitative, and economic methods for PAHs and PCBs potentially polluting feeds were developed. The PAHs were detection by liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (LC-FD) and the PCBs by gas chromatography (GC) coupled to electron capture detection (ECD), using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) as confirmatory technique. The complete data set of 27 feed samples x 13 PAH and PCB concentrations were analyzed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to find out what feeds were controlling PAH and PCB contamination.