Occurrence of bisphenols in commercial canned tomato paste in the United Arab Emirates and associated dietary exposure and health risk assessment

• Derivatization-free UPLC–MS/MS for multi-bisphenol determination • First dataset on bisphenols in canned tomato paste in the UAE • BPA was detected in most samples and exceeded safety thresholds • BPB detection patterns are consistent with partial BPA substitution in certain can coatings. Canned tomato paste is one of the most widely consumed acidic foods and can represent an important dietary source of bisphenols (BPs) exposure, due to their migration from epoxy resin coatings lining the interior of metal cans. In this study, a sensitive UPLC-MS/MS method was developed and validated for the simultaneous analysis of 15 BPs in canned tomato paste. The method demonstrated excellent analytical performance, with limits of detection (LOD) ranging from 0.052 to 1.222 μg/kg, limits of quantification (LOQ) from 0.128 to 3.702 μg/kg, and linearity (R²) > 0.9991. Recoveries ranged from 71.86 to 112.03%, and precision (RSD%) from 0.94 to 18.73%. In addition, the method was applied to 50 canned tomato paste products, where BPA and BPB were the only bisphenols detected. BPA was detected in 36 of 50 products, ranging from 0.87 to 25.83 μg/kg, while BPB was detected in 25 of 50 products, ranging from 4.73 to 116.12 μg/kg. Moreover, a probabilistic risk assessment using Monte Carlo simulation showed that BPA had the potential to pose health risks to consumers, with HQs exceeding 1 across different consumption scenarios, especially after the new reduced EFSA TDI of 0.2 ng/kg/d was applied. In contrast, the calculated HQs for BPB were below 1 for all scenarios, indicating negligible health risks.