Asamoa-Agyare D. O.¹, Quartey N.K-A.¹, Ofosu I. W.^1,

The drive for this study stemmed from the need to continue to monitor acrylamide ingestion from foods known to contain high loads, such as bread. Three main types of bread were sampled in a survey as part of consumption data using a food frequency questionnaire administered to a cross-section of consumer groups (males, females, adults, and children) in and around a mall. Acrylamide was extracted from the samples using the QuEChERS method, cleaned up, and quantified using HPLC. Palisade @Risk software was used to fit distributions of the acrylamide content and the other elements of exposure (body weight and mass of bread consumed per day). The exposure was subsequently integrated with the US EPA guidelines to determine the hazard quotient (HQ), the margin of exposure (MoE), and cancer risk (R) of the consumer groups. Subsequently, these indices were simulated at 10⁵ iterations. The results showed that acrylamide was detected in 100% of the samples analyzed, ranging from 7.0×10^-5 mg/g to 1.59×10^-3 mg/g, and that “Wheat bran bread” showed the highest levels. These risk indices of the presence of acrylamide indicated that the frequent consumption of bread could be of public health concern for genotoxicity during consumers' life stages. Though there were isolated cases of low public health concerns (MoE >10⁴), a worrying trend of children consumers showing a frequently occurring (modal) higher life-stage cancer risk (5×10^-4), that increases to even more serious risk (4×10^-3) at the 95^th percentile cannot be overlooked.

bread, acrylamide, hazard quotient, cancer risk, the margin of exposure