Spectrophotometric Determination and Assessment of Potential Health Risk of Nitrite From Meat and Processed Meat Products

Nitrite content was determined in fresh meat of chicken and pork and in different processed meat products such as sausages, salami, ham and pate with declared and not declared nitrite addition. The spectrophotometric method based on diazo-coupling reaction was used. Under the optimum working conditions, the method showed a limit of detection of 0.4 mg kg-1 and a limit of quantification of 1.2 mg kg-1. The method proved to be accurate with nitrite recovery of 98±14% from spiked samples. In the analyzed samples the nitrite content was in the range 1.1±0.1 to 26.4±2.5 mg Kg-1, values that are below the maximum admitted level of nitrite in meat products (150 mg Kg-1). The lowest nitrite concentration was found in chicken meat products (between 1.1±0.2 and 1.8±0.1 mg kg-1) while in salami, ham and sausages products the content was high (26.4±2.5; 19.0±0.7 and 13.4±1.1 respectively). The health risk exposure parameters were between 4% and 94 % and between 2% and 50% from established Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI of 0.07 mg/kg body weight/day) in case of adults and children respectively. Higher values correspond to pork meat products as salami, sausages and ham. The risk exposure to nitrite estimated for occasional consumption of meat products proved to be much more informative than the nitrite concentration. For these products, consumption should be limited to 150-300 g per week. Non-carcinogenic health effects, evaluated based on Target Hazard Quotient (THQ) were revealed for the investigated meat products by occasional consuming of 3 serving/week.