Economic Growth, Income Inequality and Food Safety Risk

Food safety risk, as an implicit cost of social and economic development, endangers the health of global residents, including China. To systematically understand the impact of socioeconomic development on food safety risk and to establish a sound modern governance system of food safety in China, this paper uses provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020 to explore the relationship between food safety risk and socio-economic development factors such as economic growth and income inequality by employing a two-way fixed effect model and moderating effect model. The results show that the food safety risk is a Kuznets curve, and the turning point is about RMB 58,104.59 per capita GDP (based on prices in 2011). However, under the moderating effect of income inequality, the turning point of the Kuznets curve of food safety risk will shift to the right, and the curve will be flattened. In other words, income inequality has a negative moderating effect on the "inverted U-shaped" relationship between economic growth and food safety risk. When dealing with food safety problems, the goal of stable and sustained economic growth and common prosperity should be incorporated into policy formulation to enhance the governance effectiveness of food safety risk.

Occurrence of Aflatoxin M1 in Raw Milk Marketed in Italy: Exposure Assessment and Risk Characterization

The current study is based on the AFM₁ contamination of milk determined from April 2013 to December 2018 in the framework of a self-control plan of six milk processing plants in Italy. These data – together with the consumption data of milk consumers – were evaluated and used for the calculation of the Estimated Daily Intake (EDI), the Hazard Index (HI), and the fraction of hepatocarcinoma cases (HCC) due to AFM₁ exposure in different population groups. Altogether a total of 31,702 milk samples were analyzed, representing 556,413 tons of milk, which is an outstanding amount compared to published studies. The results indicate the monthly fluctuation of AFM₁ levels through a period of nearly 6 years. The EDI of AFM₁ in different population groups was in the range of 0.025–0.328 ng kg⁻¹ body weight (bw) per day, based on the average consumption levels and weighted mean contamination of the milk in the study period. Considering average consumptions, in the groups of infants and toddlers, the HI calculation resulted in 1.64 and 1.4, respectively, while for older age groups, it was <1. The estimated fractions of HCC incidences attributable to the AFM₁ intakes were 0.005 and 0.004 cases per 100,000 individuals in the 0–0.9 and 1–2.9-year age groups, respectively, and below 0.004 cases in the other age categories. The monthly average AFM₁ contamination of tested milk consignments ranged between 7.19 and 22.53 ng kg⁻¹. Although the results of this extensive investigation showed a low risk of HCC, the variability of climatic conditions throughout years that influence AFB₁ contamination of feed and consequently AFM₁ contamination of milk justifies their continuous monitoring and update of the risk assessment.

Health risk-based assessment and management of heavy metals-contaminated soil sites in Taiwan

Risk-based assessment is a way to evaluate the potential hazards of contaminated sites and is based on considering linkages between pollution sources, pathways, and receptors. These linkages can be broken by source reduction, pathway management, and modifying exposure of the receptors. In Taiwan, the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act (SGWPR Act) uses one target regulation to evaluate the contamination status of soil and groundwater pollution. More than 600 sites contaminated with heavy metals (HMs) have been remediated and the costs of this process are always high. Besides using soil remediation techniques to remove contaminants from these sites, the selection of possible remediation methods to obtain rapid risk reduction is permissible and of increasing interest. This paper discusses previous soil remediation techniques applied to different sites in Taiwan and also clarified the differences of risk assessment before and after soil remediation obtained by applying different risk assessment models. This paper also includes many case studies on: (1) food safety risk assessment for brown rice growing in a HMs-contaminated site; (2) a tiered approach to health risk assessment for a contaminated site; (3) risk assessment for phytoremediation techniques applied in HMs-contaminated sites; and (4) soil remediation cost analysis for contaminated sites in Taiwan.