Perfluorinated Compounds in Food: A Global Perspective

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are resistant to breakdown and are turning up in unexpected places around the world, becoming emerging food contaminants. Although these chemicals have been used in countless products since the 1950s, they have been subject to little control until now. There is still an insufficient knowledge of their sources, occurrence, and hazards for food safety decision making. This article provides a comprehensive review of the food contamination levels and dietary intake risks posed by PFCs, as well as the specific methods developed for their determination. It is based on the evaluation of the published literature between 2004 and the beginning of 2010, with special emphasis on those reports of the last two years and in the examination of the growing body of studies on the exposure assessment and food occurrence of PFCs. The current state-of-the art and future perspectives in extraction, clean-up, detection, identification, confirmation, and quantification highlighting the advantages and limitations of each technique have been summarized. How much is known about the sources and pathways of food web and human exposure, which is needed to control and manage the release of these emerging toxic contaminants, has also been explained.