Toxins and Other Harmful Compounds in Foods provides information on the contents, distribution, chemical properties, and biological activity of toxins and other harmful compounds in foods that are natural components of the raw materials, accumulated due to microbial actions and environmental pollution, or are generated due to processing.
This book shows how different factors related to the production of raw materials, as well as to storage and processing conditions, affect the presence and concentration of toxins and other harmful compounds in foods. It shows how various regulations, as well as unit operations and processes used in food production, may eliminate different toxins or generate new ones. The real health hazards for the consumers resulting from the presence of toxic/harmful compounds in aliments are discussed, and various national and international regulations obligatory in agriculture and industry aimed at increasing food safety are presented. Methods of analysis used for detection and determination of undesirable compounds are also discussed, making it possible to understand the effect of storage and processing parameters, as well as systems of quality assurance, on food safety and to select optimum procedures for analytical control.
AGATA WITCZAK received the B.S. and M.S. from the Technical University in Szczecin, the Ph.D. from the Agricultural University in Szczecin, and the D.Sc. from the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin (ZUT). She serves as a Vice Dean for the quality of education, and for two fields of study: Commodity Science, and Management of Food Safety and Quality, at the Faculty of Food Sciences and Fisheries, ZUT. She is a member of the American Chemical Society and the Polish Society of Food Technologists, and an expert at the Sectorial Centre of Competence for the Food Industry at the Regional Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer, ZUT. She is a chemist and toxicologist who researches persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in environmental and food safety studies.
ZDZISLAW E. SIKORSKI received the B.S., M.S, Ph.D., and D.Sc. from the Gdańsk University of Technology (GUT), Dr honoris causa from the Agricultural University in Szczecin and is a fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology. He gained industrial experience in breweries, in fish, meat, and vegetable processing plants, and on a deep-sea fishing trawler. He was organizer, professor, and head of the Department of Food Chemistry and Technology in GUT, served there as Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, was chairman of the Committee of Food Technology and Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, chaired the scientific board of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia, and was an elected member of the Main Council of Science and Tertiary Education in Poland. He worked also as researcher/professor in Ohio State University; CSIRO in Hobart; DSIR in Auckland; and National Taiwan Ocean University in Keelung.
