Authors
Rosa Toledo-Gil, Angela Gonzalez-Garcia, Pasquale Crupi, Jose Enrique Yuste-Jiménez, Fernando Vallejo
Published in
Scientific reports. Jul 09, 2026. Epub Jul 09, 2026.
Abstract
The increasing use of reclaimed water in Mediterranean agriculture, together with the valorization of agro-industrial by-products, has created new scenarios for potential contaminant transfer into food-derived products. Plant-based dietary supplements constitute a distinctive exposure niche because plant materials may accumulate environmental contaminants during cultivation, while downstream processing can concentrate both bioactive compounds and xenobiotics. In this preliminary case study, a targeted UHPLC-MS/MS approach was applied to BIOMEDER, a Mediterranean multi-by-product dietary supplement formulated from plant materials cultivated under conditions that included reclaimed-water irrigation, to investigate the occurrence of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, cyanotoxins, bisphenols, and a lifestyle-related marker were simultaneously evaluated. Twenty-four pharmaceuticals (Σ = 167.8 ± 5.1 ng g-1), sixteen pesticides (Σ = 358.0 ± 0.8 ng g-1), caffeine (49.5 ± 0.2 ng g-1), and four cyanotoxins (Σ = 0.8 ± 0.0 ng g-1) were detected, whereas bisphenols were not detected above the method detection limits. Screening-level daily intake estimates, calculated assuming a supplement consumption scenario of 1 g day-1, indicated higher body-weight-normalized exposure for children (25 kg body weight) than adults (70 kg body weight). Pesticides represented the dominant contaminant class, with phosmet, fluazinam, and chlorantraniliprole contributing most to the overall burden, while piroxicam and diclofenac were the principal pharmaceutical residues. Although the detected concentrations were low, the simultaneous occurrence of multiple contaminant classes highlights the relevance of mixture-based exposure assessment for plant-derived supplements. Because the study was conducted on a single supplement formulation, the results should be interpreted as a proof-of-concept dataset rather than as representative of plant-based supplements in general. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting the concurrent occurrence of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, cyanotoxins, and a lifestyle-related chemical marker in a Mediterranean agro-industrial by-product dietary supplement, providing a baseline for future exposomic investigations and the development of monitoring strategies within a One Health framework.
PMID:
42426340
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Jul 2026.
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