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The silent threats on plate: health impacts of established and emerging foodborne toxins and contaminants
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Researchers synthesized evidence on how food toxins and emerging contaminants — including microplastics and persistent organic pollutants — harm the gut, liver, and raise cancer risk. Their review highlights that everyday dietary exposure to these pollutants is increasingly disrupting gut microbiota and contributing to chronic disease.
Food toxicology examines the impact of toxins, environmental contaminants, and pathogens on human health. Contemporary literature is synthesised to explore the origins of food toxicity and its effects on gastrointestinal health, hepatic function, and carcinogenesis. While traditional contaminants, such as heavy metals, remain critical, emerging pollutants like microplastics (MPs) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are gaining prominence due to their potential to disrupt the gut microbiota, induce oxidative stress, and promote inflammation. Additionally, thermal processing generates carcinogens such as acrylamide and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while pathogens exacerbate systemic toxicity. MPs serve as vectors for toxicants crossing biological barriers. The liver is particularly vulnerable to mycotoxin-induced carcinoma and heavy metal-mediated damage. Chronic exposure to these contaminants contributes to cancer via DNA damage, endocrine disruption, and inflammation. Current regulatory gaps regarding low-dose cumulative exposures necessitate stronger policies and interdisciplinary research to ensure safer food systems.
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Microplastics as unexplored emerging contaminant: A challenge for food safety
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Tiny plastic particles called microplastics are showing up in seafood, salt, drinking water, fruits, veggies, and packaged foods, working their way up the food chain from small organisms all the way to the food on our plates. This review of existing research shows these particles can also carry harmful chemicals and germs, and early studies link them to inflammation and cell damage, but scientists still don't know exactly how much exposure is risky or what long-term effects to expect. The takeaway: microplastics in our food are a real and growing concern worth watching, even though researchers are still figuring out just how worried we should be.
Microplastics in Foods: An Emerging Food Safety Threat
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This review examined microplastics as an emerging food safety threat, cataloging their presence across food categories including seafood, salt, bottled water, beer, and fresh produce, and reviewing ingestion risks for human consumers. With microplastics now detected in human blood, lungs, and tissues, understanding dietary exposure routes—particularly through processed and packaged foods—is increasingly urgent for public health risk characterization.
Microplastics: A Rising Global Concern Impacting Food Safety and Human Well-Being
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Researchers reviewed the distribution of microplastics and nanoplastics as emerging contaminants in marine and freshwater ecosystems, detailing how they bioaccumulate through trophic transfer and pose growing risks to food safety and human health via dietary exposure.
The hidden threat to food safety and human health: microplastics
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Researchers reviewed how microplastics enter the human food chain through seafood, table salt, and drinking water, and summarized evidence linking microplastic exposure to potential health effects including respiratory disease, reproductive problems, changes to gut bacteria, and possibly cancer.
Microplastics in Food: Health Risks
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Researchers reviewed the emerging evidence of microplastic contamination across common food items — including seafood, table salt, and drinking water — and assessed the largely unknown implications for human health, highlighting the critical knowledge gap between confirmed dietary exposure and understanding of downstream biological effects.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.