Europe Tightens Restrictions on Hydrocarbons in Virgin Olive Oil

Summary

The European Commission is expected to tighten reg­u­la­tions on the amount of poly­cyclic aro­matic hydro­car­bons (PAH) per­mit­ted in vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil due to their can­cer-caus­ing prop­er­ties and sources of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, such as tree prun­ing and indus­trial sol­vents. Producers may need to sell sub­stan­dard olive oil for biodiesel at a lower price if it con­tains PAHs, lead­ing to con­cerns and calls for more infor­ma­tion and guid­ance from farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions and researchers.

The European Commission is expected to tighten reg­u­la­tions this year, fur­ther restrict­ing the amount of poly­cyclic aro­matic hydro­car­bons (PAH) per­mit­ted in vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil.

PAHs are organic com­pounds known to cause can­cer and harm­ful muta­tions in mam­mals. The com­pounds occur nat­u­rally and are pro­duced by burn­ing coal, oil, nat­ural gas, wood, waste mate­ri­als and tobacco.

Current European reg­u­la­tions limit the amount of sev­eral PAHs in olive oil to less than ten micro­grams per gram. For benzo(a)pyrene, one of the most com­mon PAHs, the limit is two micro­grams per gram.

Virgin olive oil should ide­ally be free of PAHs. However, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion can occur either directly dur­ing milling or indi­rectly through the olives’ expo­sure to smoke or air pol­lu­tion.

A sig­nif­i­cant source of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is the prun­ing of trees dur­ing the olive har­vest­ing process. The lubri­cants used in chain­saws con­tain PAHs.

PHAs are also found in the chem­i­cals used to pro­duce jute sacks, which are specif­i­cally designed to improve dura­bil­ity and water­proof char­ac­ter­is­tics for trans­port­ing olives.

Farmers’ asso­ci­a­tions call on the European Commission to dis­sem­i­nate more infor­ma­tion to all olive farm­ers and pro­duc­ers. They are ask­ing the com­mis­sion to pro­vide for­mal guid­ance on prac­tices that could cause PAH to be intro­duced dur­ing cul­ti­va­tion, har­vest­ing and extrac­tion.

PAHs can also be found in indus­trial sol­vents. As a result, ​“olive pomace oils have higher PAH con­tents, exceed­ing the lim­its in some cases,” researchers from Italy’s University of Udine wrote in a recent study.

Under the new reg­u­la­tions, any extra vir­gin olive oil con­tain­ing PAHs is antic­i­pated to be deemed unsuit­able for con­sump­tion.

Consequently, pro­duc­ers will be required to sell this sub­stan­dard oil for biodiesel, priced at €0.80 per liter, sub­stan­tially lower than the €8 per liter for extra vir­gin olive oil.

While the sit­u­a­tion has prompted a rethink for some farm­ers, researchers believe the restric­tions will fur­ther improve pub­lic opin­ion about olive oil qual­ity.

“As far as the PAH new reg­u­la­tion is con­cerned, I believe that any idea and rule which could result in a bet­ter under­stand­ing of olive oil qual­ity is use­ful to increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion based on qual­ity,” Michele Pisante, chair of the agron­omy and crop sci­ences research and edu­ca­tion cen­ter at the University of Teramo, told Olive Oil Times.

European coun­tries that pro­duce olive oil are ask­ing the com­mis­sion to delay the new rules until 2028. However, it remains uncer­tain whether the com­mis­sion will grant this request.

Olive oil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern in the 27-mem­ber bloc. Last year, a small-scale analy­sis of France’s organic and non-organic olive oil brands revealed that 23 of 24 sam­ples were con­t­a­m­i­nated with plas­ti­ciz­ers and min­eral oil hydro­car­bons.

The study, pub­lished by France’s National Consumer Institute, iden­ti­fied traces of min­eral oil-sat­u­rated hydro­car­bons and min­eral oil aro­matic hydro­car­bons in the sam­ples. These hydro­car­bons are known to accu­mu­late in the liver and lym­phatic sys­tem, poten­tially lead­ing to inflam­ma­tion.

The new reg­u­la­tion is part of Europe’s ongo­ing efforts to com­bat food con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

In 2019, the International Olive Council (IOC) advised the European Union that the accept­able con­sump­tion level of the poten­tially car­cino­genic com­pound 3‑monochloropropane diol (3‑MCPD esters) in refined olive oil should be estab­lished at 1.25 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram.

This com­pound is typ­i­cally found in veg­etable oils, par­tic­u­larly in olive pomace and refined oils, while it is absent in vir­gin olive oils due to the lack of refin­ing processes.

In 2021, European author­i­ties also lim­ited cad­mium lev­els in table olives and cook­ing oils. The move came after the heavy metal, a known car­cino­gen, had been detected in Spanish table olives and some fla­vored Italian olive oils.

While some pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tions oppose fur­ther restric­tions from Brussels, the seat of the European Commission, there is evi­dence that they are work­ing.

In the 2022 European Union report on pes­ti­cide lev­els in food, pub­lished in April 2024, the European Food Safety Authority said it ran 1,805 tests on between 167 and 226 vir­gin olive oil sam­ples, screen­ing for nine dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal com­pounds found in pes­ti­cides. Not every sam­ple was tested for every chem­i­cal.

Thirty-seven vir­gin olive oil sam­ples were found to have pes­ti­cide lev­els below the legal max­i­mum residue lev­els. Only one sam­ple exceeded the legal limit.

By com­par­i­son, EFSA found four sam­ples exceed­ing the legal limit out of 84 in its 2019 report, with some pes­ti­cide lev­els detected in another 22 sam­ples.

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