Natural toxins in honey, a laboratory method for detecting their presence

The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie has developed and validated a method for the determination of some natural toxins in honey: pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) and tropanic (TAs). In particular the TAs were searched for in this matrix for the first time, using liquid chromatography coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS).

The developed method was applied to 40 commercial honey, detecting the presence of these toxins in 70% of the analyzed samples. Of these, only two samples contaminated with PAs and five with TAs would result in exceeding the maximum recommended concentrations or already standardized for other foods

The study was conducted by the Italian National Reference Centre for Beekeeping in collaboration with the Residues and drugs laboratory (SCS2) of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie.

The results were published by the international scientific journal Food Chemistry.