Emerging Trends and Challenges in Detecting Residues and Contaminants in Food in the Exposome Era

Author(s)Maykel Hernández-Mesa, Gaud Dervilly, Bruno Le Bizec

This article describes the analytical challenges of chemical exposomics in food safety. The need for high-throughput, multi-platform approaches—such as LC–HRMS and GC–HRMS with IMS—to capture the full spectrum of potential contaminants in our food supply is emphasized.

Chemical exposomics connects lifetime exposure to chemicals with environmental disease risk, offering valuable insights for health prevention and identifying food as a major exposure source. Profiling food chemically helps detect co-exposures, define aggregated exposure pathways, and improve risk assessments. Yet identifying many chemical classes in complex food remains difficult. High-throughput “mega-methods” using advanced techniques and efficient sample preparation are needed. Combining platforms such as liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC–HRMS), gas chromatography–HRMS (GC–HRMS), both with ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), and capillary electrophoresis–HRMS (CE–HRMS) supports broad suspect screening and non-targeted analysis in food exposomics.