Carpena et al. 2024 — Chemical hazards in herbs consumed in Europe (conference proceedings)

This 8-page conference proceedings paper from IECTO2024 (MDPI Proceedings) reviews chemical hazards in herbs and spices (“wild edible plants” in the authors’ framing) consumed in Europe, drawing on a non-systematic literature search and on RASFF notification data from 2013 to 2023. The paper is primarily concerned with mycotoxins (aflatoxins, ochratoxin A), pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs), unauthorised dyes (Sudan I–IV), and pesticide residues (chlorpyrifos, ethylene oxide); heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Hg) appear in the RASFF chemical-hazard bar chart and in the abstract framing but receive no quantitative treatment and no primary concentration data. The RASFF analysis reports 1,133 notifications for herbs and spices over the ten-year window. The paper is funded through the EU-FORA EFSA Fellowship Programme.

Key numbers

• RASFF total notifications for herbs and spices, 2013–2023: 1,133
• Split: 89 RASFF notifications for spices, 120 for herbs (note: the totals partition only a subset of the 1,133 because the breakdown counts a single notification-type slice; see “Limitations” below)
• Notification share by hazard class (Figure 2A): chemical hazards 58.0%, microbiological 32.1%, other 9.0% (read from pie chart; not tabulated; sums to 99.1% — figure labels appear rounded)
• Leading RASFF-notified chemical hazards (Figure 2A bar chart, top-down): cadmium, anthraquinone, lead, acetamiprid, bifenthrin, carbendazim, 2-chloroethanol, colourants, ochratoxin A, aflatoxin B1, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, ethylene oxide, chlorpyrifos (counts not tabulated; lengths read off bars). Note that cadmium and lead are at the TOP of the bar chart — by RASFF-notification count over 2013–2023, the two HMI-tracked heavy metals are among the most-notified chemical hazards in herbs and spices, not a secondary class.
• Chlorpyrifos RASFF notifications, 2013–2023: 135
• Ethylene oxide RASFF notifications, 2013–2023: 104
• Plant-family alert counts (Figure 2B context, in-text): Lamiaceae 82, Apiaceae 60, Piperaceae 50, Solanaceae 17
• Most-notified products: pepper, 50 notifications (Piperaceae); oregano, 39 notifications (Lamiaceae)
• EFSA pyrrolizidine-alkaloid exposure benchmark cited: Margin of Exposure (MOE) of 1:10,000 calculated for 7 ng/kg bw/day, corresponding to ~500 ng PA/day for a 70 kg adult
• Chlorpyrifos EU MRL since January 2020: 0.01 mg/kg for all food and feed (per Commission Regulation (EU) 2020/1085)
• Cited analytical performance for pesticide multiresidue UHPLC-MS/MS in dried herbs: LOQ 0.005–0.100 mg/kg, recovery 70–120%
• Cited analytical performance for PA detection by ultrasound-assisted dispersive-SPE + LC-MS/MS: LOQ 1 µg/kg, recovery 61–128%
• Heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Hg): named in the abstract and visible in the Figure 2A chart but no numerical concentration data, sampling, or analytical methods are reported for any metal

Methods (brief)

Narrative literature review via PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and Web of Science, plus EFSA-published data and Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) notification analysis for 2013–2023. Authors state that Q1 and Q2 journal articles were prioritised. No systematic-review protocol (no PRISMA registration, no inclusion/exclusion criteria documented, no search strings disclosed). No primary measurements, no LOD/LOQ contributed, no sample digestion or instrument detail. Eight-page conference-proceedings format.

Limitations

• The two main RASFF figure panels (Figure 2A pie/bar; Figure 2B by-product distribution) are presented graphically without an underlying tabulation, so individual hazard-by-hazard counts must be read off the bars. Counts cited above for individual hazards are imprecise to the bar resolution.
• The 89-spices / 120-herbs total (209) does not equal 1,133, indicating the breakdown is over a sub-slice not defined in the text (likely a specific hazard category, but the figure caption does not clarify). Do not aggregate these numbers as if they partition the full notification corpus.
• Heavy metals are listed as one of the hazard classes in the chart and named in the title, but the body of the paper contains no heavy-metals-specific section, no occurrence values, no concentration ranges, no exceedance counts, and no analytical details. This source contributes only the regulatory-landscape framing for herbs/spices contamination work; it does not contribute occurrence data for any metal.
• Conference proceedings (IECTO2024); review is editorially selected but not full peer-reviewed in the journal-article sense.

Implications

Certification: Useful contextual evidence that mycotoxins, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, unauthorised dyes, and pesticide residues are well-represented in the recent RASFF record for herbs and spices in the EU. Cadmium and lead appear at the top of the Figure 2A bar chart, but the paper itself contributes no quantitative concentration data for Pb, Cd, or Hg; this source should not be used as an occurrence reference for any metal.

Courses: Useful as a single-paper map of the European regulatory hazard landscape for herbs and spices — RASFF mechanics, dominant alert categories, and the EFSA MOE framing for PAs. Pair with a primary-data source (e.g., a heavy-metals occurrence study in spices) when teaching the heavy-metals angle.

App: No concentration values usable for ingredient contamination_profile updates.

Verification notes

• 2026-05-28 (Claude Opus 4.7, v2.0 manual-fetch merge-enhance — Phase 3 audit application): fresh-context audit subagent (Phase 2) flagged a Figure 2A bar-label misread (“benzo[a]pyrene” → should be “bifenthrin”; the abstract names “chlorpyrifos, carbendazim, and bifenthrin” as the three pesticide examples and the bar-chart label is bifenthrin), a Figure 2A pie-slice misread (microbiological 32.0% → should be 32.1%), and an editorial-framing concern that the Certification implications line called heavy metals “a secondary signal in the regulator’s recent enforcement attention.” Verified all three against the page-3 figure: cadmium and lead are AT THE TOP of the Figure 2A chemical-hazard bar chart, so the “secondary signal” framing was wrong on its own terms (the paper does not rank them, and the chart contradicts the framing). All three findings applied: bifenthrin substituted for benzo[a]pyrene, pie-slice corrected to 32.1% with a sum-to-99.1% rounding note, Certification line rewritten to point at the bar-chart top-listing rather than a secondary-signal framing.
• 2026-05-28 (Claude Opus 4.7, v2.0 manual-fetch merge-enhance — Phase 1 prior to audit): page was originally created 2026-05-14 in the kimi-cond05 batch ingest with generic raw_handle: manual-fetch-kimi, a truncated raw_path, and a Certification implications line that referenced “HMT&C threshold-setting” by name. Phase 1 fixes:
  • Set per-PDF raw_handle: MFK_assessment-of-the-chemical-hazards-in-herbs-consum.
  • Restored full raw_path with the trailing-space folder name (“Manual Fetch Kimi ”) matching the on-disk path.
  • Added raw_sha256 and access_url.
  • Added tier_rationale documenting why this is B, not A, given the conference-proceedings format and absence of primary data.
  • Cleaned the Certification implications line to remove the explicit “HMT&C threshold-setting” phrasing (Part 2 wiki/HMTc-firewall hygiene); the underlying point — that this source contributes no quantitative heavy-metals data — is preserved.
  • Expanded Key numbers to cite the 89-spice / 120-herb partition, the pie-chart hazard split, the RASFF hazard ordering, the EFSA PA MOE benchmark, the chlorpyrifos EU MRL, and the cited analytical performance figures for the two main methods this paper highlights. Added an explicit “Limitations” section documenting the figure-read imprecision and the unexplained 209-vs-1,133 partition.
• The original RASFF totals (1,133; 135 chlorpyrifos; 104 EtO), the plant-family counts (Lamiaceae 82, Apiaceae 60, Piperaceae 50, Solanaceae 17), and the pepper-50/oregano-39 product counts were verified against the page text and Figure 2 caption on a re-read; numbers are unchanged.
• DOI, title, authors, year, publication, license, and source_type were unchanged.

Wiki pages updated on ingest

• herbs-and-spices
• spices
• lead
• cadmium
• mercury

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.