University of Guilan Caspian Journal of Environmental Sciences 1735-3033 20 5 2022 12 01 Contamination of honey products by Clostridium botulinum spores and fungi along with their effects on human health 1143 1148 6095 10.22124/cjes.2022.6095 EN Yahya Ebrahimi Department of Cardiology, School of Medicine, Shahid Madani Hospital, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran Andrés Alexis Ramírez-Coronel Catholic University of Cuenca, Azogues campus, Ecuador, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina & National University of Education, Azogues, Ecuador; CES University, Colombia Aiman Mohammed Baqir Al-Dhalimy Department of Nursing, Altoosi University College, Najaf, Iraq Raed H. C. Alfilm Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Technical Engineering Department, College of Technical Engineering, The Islamic University, Najaf, Iraq Mohammed Al-Hassan Experiential Learning Center Lead, Department of Nursing, University of Calgary in Qatar, Doha, Qatar Rasha Fadhel Obaid6 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Al-Mustaqbal University College, Babylon, Iraq Ameer A. Alameri Department of Chemistry, College of Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq Fatemeh Rastiani Department of Food Hygiene and Safety, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran Yousef Khaledian Department of Food Hygiene and Quality Control, Faculty of Veterinary, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran Samira Shokri Department of Environmental Health, Food Safety Division, Faculty of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Journal Article 2023 01 05 Bee products, such as honey, are widely consumed as food and medicine. Because of its sticky nature, honey does absorb bacterial spores from dust or bee activity, and their contamination may carry serious health hazards. Databases searched to obtain articles included “Google Scholar”, “SID”, “Scopus”, “PubMed”, “Science Direct”, and “ISI”. Keywords used in this study included <em>Clostridium botulinum, </em>Honey, bees, fungi in their titles. This study focused on published articles from 2016 to 2022. Result showed that this product may contain a great variety of bacteria and particularly, fungi that eventually entered the food chain at an early stage (e.g., via pollen). The ranges of samples with <em>C. botulinum</em>, yeast and mould infections were 0.5% - 68%, 15.78% - 100% and 17.22 - 100%, respectively. Overall, the amount of honey contaminated with <em>Cl. botulinum</em> spores, yeast, and molds in some of the samples that were evaluated was nil, however certain samples from the Lithuanian Kazakh, Turkey, and Brazil regions exhibited varying levels of contamination. https://cjes.guilan.ac.ir/article_6095_126b0548f88673cea4f64ee45c527a58.pdf