Selected hazardous elements in food: Chemical analysis including speciation and biological properties.

Abstract

Food is one of the main sources of delivering nutrients to organisms. The biological and physicochemical properties of elements are strongly dependent on their speciation forms. From this point of view, determining the speciation forms provides insight into the properties of the elements and allows discussions on general effects such as safety, health-promoting and nutritional properties of food. In this review, we discussed several subjects concerning selected hazardous elements (HEs) from food; HEs whose speciation forms give rise to safety risk to organisms. These issues are: 1) analytical: sample preparation, content and speciation forms determination, analytical techniques used in speciation analysis with significant attention paid to multi-elemental speciation; 2) transformation and interaction of speciation forms occurring at the stage of analysis as well as metabolism in the organism; 3) bio accessibility and bioavailability of HEs from food, and methods for reducing their toxic impact on the organism.