Abstract: With the popularization of the concept of a healthy diet, people are increasingly concerned about food safety. Thermal processing provides foods with desired smell, unique flavor and taste, but also leads to the generation of harmful substances, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are a class of substances with acute toxicity, genotoxicity, carcinogenicity and phototoxicity that exist widely in thermally processed food matrices. Studies have shown that dietary exposure to PAHs accounts for 88%–98% of the total daily exposure of humans to PAHs. Thus, controlling PAHs levels in foods is of great practical importance for reducing the harmful effects brought about by dietary exposure to PAHs. This paper reviews the major generation pathways, deleterious effects and control strategies of PAHs, with a view to providing a reference for research on new control technologies for PAHs in foods.

Key words: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; formation mechanism; toxicology; reduction and control techniques