Incoming legislation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemical substances
places responsibilityonthe chemical industry, including downstreamusers of chemicals, to provide appropriate
safety information with which to improve the protection of human health and the environment
through the better and earlier identification of the intrinsic properties of chemical substances. Food consumption
is only one of several potential exposure routes, but if industrial chemicals enter the food chain,
the dietmay be a significant pathway of human exposure. Consequently strong measures are taken to protect
the integrity of the human food chain and these are constantly revised to address perceived chemical
safety threats. In order to understand the risk presented by the possible presence of a chemical residue in
food, knowledge is required of its toxicology and of the level of exposure. Reliable exposure assessment
requires robust analytical methodology. Existing standards for the validation and performance evaluation
of methods have led to improved analytical capability and better inter-laboratory agreement of results.
However, increasing the availability of robust, cost-effective methodology should be the benchmark for
future developments in the field of food chemical residue analysis. Chromatography meets the needs of
target analyses well and largely provides the selectivity of measurement needed to assess compliance
with food regulatory limits. However, to keep pace with the increased need for expanded analytical capability
– faster throughput, more analytes per sample – chromatographic separation capability still needs
to grow. In this respect, orthogonal separation techniques and multi-dimensional chromatography are
key tools for the future.