Exposure assessment to ochratoxin A from the consumption of Italian and Hungarian wines

A total of 267 wine samples including 19 dessert, 186 red, 11 rose and 51 white produced mostly in the years 1997-2002 in Italian and Hungarian regions were analyzed for ochratoxin A (OTA) using inmunoaffinity column (IAC) clean-up and HPLC with fluorimetric detection. None of Hungarian wine samples were contaminated with this mycotoxin. For Italian red wines, 84% of the samples were positive for OTA ranged from 0.01 to 4.00 ng/mL. Furthermore, OTA was detected in 63% of dessert, in 56% of rose and in 19% of white wine samples ranged from 0.01 to 1.64, from 0.01 to 1.04 and from 0.01 to 0.21 ng/mL, respectively. A study of OTA daily exposure assessment in Italian wines was also carried out outlining a quite low contribution to the overall daily intake. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.