Monitoring contaminants in food chain and their impact on human health.

In recent years a great attention has been focused in Europe on the importance of food safety and the relation between diet and health. Moreover, worldwide changes in population lifestyle, together with modifi cations in food processing, production and distribution contributed to the eating habits of Western populations and to their reaction to recent public health emergencies. As an example, the real or alleged dioxin contamination that affected several industrialized countries has increased the interest of Authorities, producers and consumers on topics such as food safety and risks for human health deriving from contaminated food. The annual report of the European Commission Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) summarizes notifi cations on food contaminations occurred in different countries. Data analyses provided a useful tool to develop future effi cient programs for food control. In this context, a working group of the PIAS project studied how specifi c classes of environmental contaminants (e.g, pesticides, metals, dioxins) may affect human health through the food chain. Their results are presented in this Chapter. A special section has been dedicated to highlight issues of major interest in this fi eld, such as the determination of heavy metals and dioxins in food matrixes and biological samples; experimental models to assess the harmful effect of contaminants on human reproduction; the role of cytochrome P450 in xenobiotics metabolism. The last section of this Chapter proposes a research programme aimed at integrating aspects already faced in current literature as independent issues, but rarely considered in a holistic approach. The competences needed to pursue this goal are covered by the Italian National Research Council or by the involvement of other Italian or international institutions. The fi nal proposal targets the youth and intends to determine the cause-effect relationship between the presence of contaminants in the diet, their accumulation in humans and the risk of chronic diseases. Key issues, such as bioavailability and adaptive response (hormesis), will be explored using suitable experimental models to suggest a functional link, at molecular level, between the onset of specifi c diseases and the concentrations of contaminants measured in food.