Acrylamide A Cooking Carcinogen

What is Acrylamide ?

Acrylamide is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH₂=CHCNH₂. It is main Cause of Neurotoxic effect which may cause cancer.

Acrylamide is formed by reaction of 2 naturally occurring GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) food ingredients fried at High Temperature.

Asparagine+ Dextrose @1800C →Acrylamide.

How does acrylamide end up in foods ?

The chemical naturally forms in items such as baked goods, cereals, potato products and coffee during the maillard or browning reaction, when the amino acid asparagine and sugar combine in the presence of heat higher than 120 degrees Celsius (248°F). High-temperature cooking, such as frying, roasting or baking is most likely to cause acrylamide formation. Boiling and steaming do not typically form acrylamide. Generally, acrylamide is more likely to accumulate when cooking is done for longer periods or at higher temperatures.

California’s Proposition 65

The ruling stemmed from a court case invoking Proposition 65, a state law that requires warnings if products or places contain certain types of hazardous chemicals. But the implications reach far beyond the Golden State. California has the sixth-largest economy in the world, so manufacturers of consumer goods worldwide try to abide by Prop. 65 regulations.

In late March, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that cups of coffee sold to consumers would fall under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act — Prop. 65 — which was passed by a ballot vote of California residents in 1986. The judge made a final ruling May 7.

The law applies because roasted coffee beans — and beverages brewed from them — contain acrylamide, which is on Prop. 65’s state-regulated list of chemicals “known” to cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm. If a product contains any of the list’s approximately 900 chemicals, it must be labelled to warn consumers, or the chemical must be removed or reduced to levels that Prop. 65 regulators consider safe.

Evidence that acrylamide causes cancer or reproductive harm-

Acrylamide is used in industry and research to make polymers and is a neurotoxin at very high doses. It was found to be present in starchy, browned foods in 2002.

For cancer studies in 1986 and 1995, researchers fed rats high doses of acrylamide in their drinking water throughout their two-year lifetime. The highest doses increased rates of thyroid, testicular and breast tumours. In 2012, the US government’s National Toxicology Program (NTP), which tests environmental chemicals for potentially hazardous health effects, found similar increases in rats and mice. In male rats, the rate of thyroid tumors rose from 6 percent in rats fed no acrylamide to 25 percent in those fed the highest dose, for example. In females, the rate of a breast tumor rose from 33 percent without acrylamide to 65 percent for the highest dose.

Regulatory Comments:-

Organisations including the World Health Organisation, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and UK scientific advisory committees have assessed the risks posed by acrylamide.

In 2015, the EFSA published its risk assessment of acrylamide in food. The assessment confirms that acrylamide levels found in food have the potential to increase the risk of cancer for people of all ages. However, it’s not possible to estimate how much the risk is increased. Acrylamide in your diet could contribute to your lifetime risk of developing cancer.

As it’s not possible to establish a safe level of exposure for acrylamide to quantify the risk, the EFSA used a ‘margin of exposure’ approach. The margin of exposure (MOE) approach provides an indication of the level of health concern posed by a substance’s presence in food.

EFSA’s Scientific Committee states that, for substances that are genotoxic and carcinogenic, a MOE of 10,000 or higher is of low concern for public health. The MOE identified in our total diet study on acrylamide have indicated a concern for public health. These range between 300 for an average adult consumer and 120 for toddlers.

In this Context TUV India has developed and validated the analytical method to detect Acrylamide in Food products like Coffee beans, Biscuits and Potato Fries.

The Acrylamide method is by LCMSMS with LOQ 0.01 mg/kg. (10 ppb).