Phthalates are a huge class of chemicals with a wide spectrum of industrial uses, from the manufacture of plastics to food contact applications, children’s toys, and medical devices. People and animals can be exposed through different routes (i.e., ingestion, inhalation, dermal, or iatrogenic exposure), as these compounds can be easily released from plastics to water, food, soil, air, making them ubiquitous environmental contaminants. In the last decades, phthalates and their metabolites have proven to be of concern, particularly in products for pregnant women or children. Moreover, many authors reported high concentrations of phthalates in soft drinks, mineral waters, wine, oil, ready-to-eat meals, and other products, as a possible consequence of their accumulation along the food production chain and their accidental release from packaging materials. However, due to their different physical and chemical properties, phthalates do not have the same human and environmental impacts and their association to several human diseases is still under debate. In this review we provide an overview of phthalate toxicity, pointing out the health and legal issues related to their occurrence in several types of food and beverage.

The chlorophylls are responsible for the characteristic green color of the olive fruits and their products. Virgin olive oil (VOO) is obtained from processing olives only by mechanical and physical means under conditions ensuring that the natural characteristics of the fruit composition are maintained as far as possible. In terms of the total chlorophyll content of oil, the extraction process entails a loss of chlorophyll of up to 80%. Many factors, both agronomical and technological, can affect the presence of green pigments in VOO. The analysis of green pigments in olives and/or oil requires an initial phase of extraction of these compounds from the solid and fluid matrix, followed by the selective separation and subsequent identification of the different components of the chlorophyll fraction. The aim of this review article is to summarize and critically analyze the available information about chlorophylls in VOO.

A rapid Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) attenuated total reflectance (ATR) spectroscopic method was applied to the determination of water content (WC), total phenol amount (TP) and antioxidant activity (ABTS .þ ) of virgin olive oils (VOO) and olive oils. Calibration models were constructed using partial least squares regression. Oil samples with WC ranging from 289 to 1402 mg water/kg oil, with TP from 46 to 877 mg gallic acid/kg oil and with ABTS .þ from 0 to 5.7 mmol Trolox/kg oil were considered for chemometric analysis. Better results were obtained when selecting suitable spectral ranges; in particular, from 2260 to 1008 cm À1 for WC, from 3610 to 816 cm À1 for TP and from 3707 to 1105 cm À1 for ABTS .þ . Satisfactory LOD values by the FTIR-chemometric methods were achieved: 9.4 (mg/kg oil) for WC; 12.5 (mg gallic acid/kg oil) for TP, and 0.76 (mmol Trolox/kg oil) for ABTS .þ . The evaluation of the applicability of these analytical approaches was tested by use of validation sample sets (n ¼ 16 for WC, n ¼ 11 for TP and n ¼ 14 for ABTS) with nearly quantitative recovery rates (99-114%). The FTIR-ATR method provided results that were comparable to conventional procedures. Practical applications:The presented method is based on ATR-FTIR in combination with multivariate calibration methodologies and permits a simultaneous evaluation of important quality parameters of VOO (WC, TP and ABTS .þ ). This approach represents an easy and convenient means for monitoring olive oil quality with the advantage of ease of operation, speed, no sample pretreatment and no consumption of solvents. The data obtained with this method are comparable to those obtained using the official reference method. Therefore, the technique is highly plausible as an alternative to the standard procedure for routine analysis or control at-line of production processes.

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The BD Phoenix system was compared to the cefoxitin disk diffusion test for detection of methicillin (meticillin) resistance in 1,066 Staphylococcus aureus and 1,121 coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CoNS) clinical isolates. The sensitivity for Phoenix was 100%. The specificities were 99.86% for S. aureus and 88.4% for CoNS.Infections caused by methicillin (meticillin)-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) are an increasing problem worldwide (1). Methicillin resistance is primarily due to the presence of a mecA gene which encodes penicillin binding protein 2a (PBP2a) (4).Detection of the mecA gene or PBP2a is considered the gold standard for detecting mecA-mediated methicillin resistance in staphylococci. Among available phenotypic methods, the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) has recently introduced the cefoxitin disk diffusion (DD) test for predicting the presence of mecA in S. aureus and CoNS (5, 6), which is preferred over the oxacillin DD test (21). Automated systems are widely used for species identification and susceptibility testing. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of the BD Phoenix automated system (BD, Sparks, MD) in determining methicillin resistance in comparison to the cefoxitin DD test.The study was performed on 1,066 S. aureus isolates and 1,121 CoNS collected during the 2006-2007 routine clinical laboratory activity at the University Hospital of Perugia, Italy. Strains were isolated from the inpatient population of surgical and medical wards and, to a lesser extent, from the outpatient population. Some strains came from other laboratories, for which we are the reference center. Isolates obtained from consecutive cultures from the same patient were excluded. Identification of the isolates was done by conventional methods (colony pigmentation, hemolysis, coagulase production, and the clumping factor test), the Phoenix system (BD), and, in selected cases, the API Staph system (bioMérieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France). Isolates were tested with the cefoxitin DD test, which was performed using Mueller-Hinton agar plates (bioMérieux) and 30-g cefoxitin disks (bioMérieux) and interpreted according to current CLSI breakpoints (6), and with PMIC/ID gram-positive Phoenix panels (BD), which were prepared from subcultures on Columbia sheep blood agar (BD) after isolation on primary plates, according to the manufacturer's instructions. The agreement between both methods was considered the "consensus result." PB2a expression, as detected by the latex agglutination test (Denka Seiken Co., Niigata, Japan), was used to resolve discrepancies. The test was carried out according to the manufacturer's instructions on uninduced inocula for S. aureus (3,22,23) or inocula induced with a 1-g oxacillin disk for CoNS (13,14,17). Methicillin susceptibility in PBP2a-negative CoNS strains was confirmed by mecA gene testing, performed with a LightCycler instrument (Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, IN) as described elsewhere (17). For S. aure...