Organic Microcontaminants in Tomato Crops Irrigated with Reclaimed Water Grown under Field Conditions: Occurrence, Uptake, and Health Risk Assessment

• Published in: Journal of agricultural and food chemistry Vol. 67; no. 25; pp. 6930 - 6939
• Main Authors: Martínez-Piernas, Ana B, Plaza-Bolaños, Patricia, Fernández-Ibáñez, Pilar, Agüera, Ana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 26.06.2019
• Subjects: LC-MS target/suspect analysis; plant uptake; reclaimed water reuse; health risk assessment; organic microcontaminants
• ISSN: 0021-8561; 1520-5118
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.9b01656

In many regions, reuse of reclaimed water (RW) is a necessity for irrigation. The presence of organic microcontaminants (OMCs) in RW and their translocation to plants may represent a risk of human exposure. Nevertheless, information available about real field crops is scarce and focused on a limited number of compounds. The novelty of this work relies on the application of a wider-scope analytical approach based on a multianalyte target analysis (60 compounds) and a suspect screening (>1300 compounds). This methodology was applied to real field-grown tomato crops irrigated with RW. The study revealed the presence of 17 OMCs in leaves (0.04–32 ng g–1) and 8 in fruits (0.01–1.1 ng g–1), 5 of them not reported before in real field samples. A health-risk assessment, based on the toxicological threshold concern (TTC) concept, showed that RW irrigation applied under the conditions given does not pose any threat to humans.