Concentration of ochratoxin A in breakfast cereals and snacks consumed in the United States

•Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a potential human carcinogen and commonly occurring mycotoxins in foods.•OTA has unusually long half-life (ca. 35 days) and may pose a significant threat to public health.•We surveyed breakfast cereals from the U. S. for OTA by high performance liquid chromatography.•The results showed that 75 samples (52%) were contaminated with OTA in the range of 0.10 and 7.43 ng/g.

A total of 144 breakfast cereal and snack samples collected from six areas in the United States (U.S.) were surveyed for the presence of ochratoxin A (OTA). All samples are the processed products including mainly corn, oat, wheat, and rice. The analytical methods in this study were immunoaffinity columns (IAC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection (FLD). The method provided recoveries of OTA from all sample matrices in the range of 95-100%. The limits of detection and limits of quantification for OTA were 0.032 and 0.10 ng/g for corn, wheat, and rice based samples; 0.038 and 0.12 ng/g for oat based samples, respectively. Analytical results showed that 75 samples (52%) were contaminated with OTA in the range of 0.10 and 7.43 ng/g. Among the OTA contaminated samples, 40% were labeled as organic and 60% were conventional with mean concentrations of 1.21 and 1.07 ng/g, respectively. There were ten contaminated samples, all from oat based products, exceeding the maximum limits for OTA by European Commission Regulation (3 ng/g) in cereal based products.