Trade-offs between food safety and food security and its impacts towards the SDGs for children in South Africa, Sweden and Switzerland

Agriculture in the 21st century faces multiple challenges: it must produce more food for a growing population and adopt more sustainable production methods, all while adapting to climate change.

Accordingly, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) foresee a rethinking of food production systems, linking to SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG12 (responsible consumption and production), and SDG 13 (climate action).

Climate change, with higher temperature and precipitation, will amplify mold problems in crops and mycotoxin contamination, which in turn, will increase the use of conventional and organic pesticides.

Both mycotoxins and pesticides are linked to adverse health effects (e.g., neurodevelopmental disorders, immune deficiency, cancer), but little is known about their co-occurrence and associated health effects.

The purpose of this project is to measure twenty pesticides and ten common mycotoxins, and several unregulated emerging mycotoxins in urine from children in South Africa (n=600), Switzerland (n=600) and Sweden (n=200) using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and link their exposure levels to existing data on health outcomes.

The project is closely linked to the SDGs above, and the results will aid in the understanding of co- and mixture exposure to emerging toxicants and their impact on health in vulnerable population groups, enabling improvement of policies and regulation to obtain safe and sustainable food production.