Occurrence of Deoxynivalenol in Foods for Human Consumption from Tehran, Iran

The occurrence of deoxynivalenol (DON) in retail foods in Tehran (Iran) was determined using high-performance liquid chromatography technique and immunoaffinity column as the clean-up step. A method was validated for analysis of DON in rice, bread, puffed corn snack and wheat flour. The average recoveries and precision (RSD) for DON in different foods ranged 84.2-93.1% and 2.9-12.0%, respectively. A survey of DON was performed on the 72 samples of rice, bread, puffed corn snack, and wheat flour collected from Tehran retail market. The data showed that 10 samples (13.9%) out of 72 samples were contaminated with DON with the maximum level of 368.7 ng/g. The samples had contamination level lower than the maximum tolerated level of DON in foods in Iran. The total intake of DON was under the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake set for DON by the JECFA.