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Occurrence and exposure to glyphosate present in bread and flour products in Lebanon - ScienceDirect
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## Food Control

# Occurrence and exposure to glyphosate present in bread and flour products in Lebanon

Author links open overlay panelChristelleBou-Mitria, Alexandria NivelleMekannaa, SabineDaghera, SaraMoukarzela, AntoineFarhatab

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## Highlights

- •
  This is the first study assessing glyphosate in bread and flour, in Lebanon.

- •
  Glyphosate levels were almost equal regardless bread brand, flour type, and origin.

- •
  Glyphosate was detected in all the flour samples and in 80% of the bread samples.

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  The glyphosate residue levels were all below the Maximum Residue level.

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  Exposure to glyphosate via consumption of flour and bread was below the limits.

## Abstract

Glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide, is globally used in crop production and persists in bread and flour. Tolerance limits for glyphosate in cereal products have been established internationally. In Lebanon, there are scarce published data on the level of glyphosate food products and consumer exposure levels remains unknown.

All bread and flour products available (n = 164 samples) characterized by their distinct processing methods have been collected from Mount Lebanon and Beirut governorates. Glyphosate concentrations were assessed, using ELISA and compared across samples by brand, flour types and country of origin. The exposure level of the Lebanese population to glyphosate was also assessed through estimated daily intake calculations.

Out of the assessed bread products and of flour products tested 80% and 100% were contaminated with glyphosate. All the values were below the international limits (30 mg/kg for bread and 0.5 mg/kg for flour). The glyphosate median residue level was significantly higher in unconventional bread (52.9 ppb), as compared to bran (28.5 ppb) and whole grain (25.7 ppb) and white bread (14.9 ppb) (p = 0.004). Highest percentage positive samples were found for unconventional bread types and lowest for brown bread type (100 and 69.2%, respectively). The findings also showed that glyphosate occurrence and level was statistically identical in all the flour samples including different types and country of origin (p = 0.75, 0.146, respectively). Lebanese population daily exposures to glyphosate through consumption of bread and flour products were estimated to be 0.0702 μg/kg BW/day and 0.1318 μg/kg BW/day, respectively. Daily bread exposure was only 0.000117% of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) of 1 mg/kg/day as listed by Codex, and 0.00039% of the ADI of 0.5 mg/kg/day as listed by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. Dietary exposure to glyphosate through flour and flour-based bread products seems to be low in Lebanon. Future extensive studies need to evaluate exposure to glyphosate from other staple foods and through other routes of exposure beyond diet.

## Introduction

More than 3 million tons of pesticides are applied annually around the world with the need to produce large yields of safe crops (Silva et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). Glyphosate [molecular formula; C3H8NO5P or HOOCCH2NHCH2PO (OH) 2] is an extensively used herbicide in more than 130 countries, representing 12% of the overall pesticide market (Schönbrunn et al., 2001; Székács and Darvas, 2018). Glyphosate's annual global production is continuously rising to resolve the issue of seed resistance after extensive spraying of glyphosate-resistant crops varieties such as wheat, corn, and canola (IARC, 2017, p. 112; Székács and Darvas, 2018).

Glyphosate eliminates broadleaf plants and various types of weeds through plant growth inhibition by blocking the shikimic acid pathway and causing amino acid deprivation (Martinez & Al-Ahmad, 2019; Schönbrunn et al., 2001).

Dietary exposure to glyphosate is possible through intake of different foods such as wheat and wheat products (Berg et al., 2018; Chiesa et al., 2019; Glaze et al., 2017; Kolakowski, 2020; Ledoux et al., 2020; Meftaul et al., 2020; Okada et al., 2020; Raimets et al., 2020; Reeves et al., 2019; Rodriguez and Souza, 2018; Stephenson and Harris, 2016, The alliance for natural health; Temkin and Naldenko, 2019; USA, 2016; Vicini et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020; Zoller et al., 2018). Glyphosate was classified in 2015 as being probably carcinogenic to humans, under risk category Group 2 A by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) (IARC, 2017, p. 112). Hence, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a chronic reference dose for glyphosate (RfD) also referred to as acceptable daily intake (ADI) in Europe at 1.0 mg/kg/day (EPA, 2017). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has adopted ADI of 0–1 mg/kg/day as per recommendations of the joint FAO/WHO meeting on pesticide residues (FAO, 2007) and is expected to re-evaluate glyphosate use in 2022 (Organic Consumer Association, 2018). The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, on the other hand, sets a more stringent ADI at 0.3–0.5 mg/kg/day (Myers et al., 2016) and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority at 0.3 mg/kg/day (Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, 2020).

Several countries have banned the total use of glyphosate such as Denmark, Barcelona in Spain, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, several French and US cities and 8 out of 10 Canadian provinces. Enforced restrictions such as pre-harvest and public area use were applied in Netherlands, Italy, and Australia (Organic Consumer Association, 2018; Navdanya International, 2020, Meftaul et al., 2020). As for the case of Lebanon, glyphosate is not included in the list of banned pesticides by the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture (LIBNOR NL 662:2019, MOA, 2020).

Although the consumption of bread and staple wheat flour products including Lebanese manakeesh, kaak, sweets, and cereals is widespread in Lebanon (FAO, 2007); there is no existing data on the exposure of the Lebanese population to glyphosate.

Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the concentration of glyphosate in commonly consumed bread and flour products, and estimate the risk with consumer exposure.

## Section snippets

## Samples

A total of 164 samples of bread and flour from different brands and types have been collected from all bakeries in Mount Lebanon, all supermarkets in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and at the Beirut port, between December 2019 and February 2020. Collection of imported wheat flour followed routine protocol procedures as per port inspections conducted by the Ministry of Economy and Trade. Wheat flour batches were randomly selected and mixed in reference to the total quantity available per batch in the

## Prevalence of glyphosate in Lebanese flour

The occurrence of samples detected positive for glyphosate in all purpose, pastry, whole wheat, Lebanese bread flour, and unconventional type of flour (cake flour, semolina, durum, type 00 for pasta) with their maximum, minimum, median, mean, percentage was reported in Table 1. All flour categories showed 100% positive tested samples. The glyphosate median residue levels were highest in unconventional flours (102.9 ppb) as compared to the Lebanese bread flour (57.8 ppb), all purpose (50.3 ppb),

## Prevalence of glyphosate in bread and flour available in Lebanon

Results of this study indicated that most of the assessed bread and all types of flour available on the Lebanese market contained glyphosate residues. Similarly, The Australian annual wheat flour residue testing for the year 2018–2019 detected all 27 samples positive for glyphosate and were below MRL. Most recently, glyphosate was detected in only 14% of white (n = 15) and whole-grain (n = 16) flour samples from UK and Germany, all below the MRL set by the European Union (Wang et al., 2020). A

## Concluding remarks

Findings of this research showed that all the flour samples and most of the bread samples available on the Lebanese market contained glyphosate residues, yet the levels were all below MRLs. The results showed that glyphosate residue level was significantly higher in bread containing higher content of crude fiber as compared to white bread.. No significant difference existed between glyphosate median residue levels in local flour versus imported flour since the latter could have been repacked

## Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

## CRediT authorship contribution statement

Christelle Bou-Mitri: designed the study. Alexandria Nivelle Mekanna: had worked on the data collection, entry and analysis as well as preparing the manuscript. Sabine Dagher: had worked on the data collection, entry and analysis as well as preparing the manuscript, All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Sara Moukarzel: designed the study. Antoine Farhat: suggested the study idea, read and proofed the manuscript.

## Declaration of competing interest

None.

## Acknowledgements

Authors would like to acknowledge the efforts and supports of the laboratory technicians who aided in the experimental procedure of the study.

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Contamination of cereals with tebuconazole (TEB) can affect the dietary risk assessment. This study investigates, for the first time, how mechanical, thermal, physical–chemical, and biochemical processes affect the TEB level in wheat, rye, and barley. The biochemical process of malting was the most effective for tebuconazole reduction (by 86%) in cereals. Thermal processes were also effective, i.e., boiling (70%) and baking (55%). These processes considerably decreased the concentration of tebuconazole, and Procesing Factors (PFs) were from 0.10 to 0.18 (malting), 0.56 to 0.89 (boiling), and 0.44 to 0.45 (baking), respectively. The concentration of TEB was not reduced after the application of mechanical processing. The risk was estimated in dietary exposure assessment on the basis of the highest reported levels of tebuconazole residues bread. At a high level of rye bread consumption, the potential exposure to tebuconazole reached only 3.5% and 2.7% in children and adults, respectively.

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