Assessment of PCBs and exposure risk to infants in breast milk of primiparae and multiparae mothers in an electronic waste hot spot and non-hot spot areas in Ghana

The impact of environmental pollution on the quality of mother's milk

“…The author suggests this may be caused by urban women eating a larger number of fish dishes.(Schuhmacher et al 2007)19 PCBsHungary22(3× at 5, 12, 84 lactation days)2012∑ 19 Mean5 days, 37.45;12 days, 30.66;84 days, 30.08PCB concentration decreased during lactation. The biggest fall occurred between day 5 and 12.(Vigh et al 2013)12 PCBsSlovakia332006–2007∑ 12 2.7–32.0 TEQ pg/gIn milk from women who live in industrial areas, concentration of POPs exceeded TDI limit (WHO).(Chovancová et al 2011)8 PCBsTunisia362010∑ 8 16.4–1360.2PCB concentration was positively correlated with the age of mothers, who gave birth for the first time Mothers with second-born and following children - no correlation.(Hassine et al 2012)18 PCBsChina(Shenzhen)602007∑ 12 dl-PCBs 1.964–13.967∑ 6 indicate PCBs 0.0034–0.0392Body burden of PCBs was positively correlated with the period of residence in Shenzhen and fish consumption.Positive correlation between mother’s age and body burden for DL-PCBs and PCBs.(Deng et al 2012)7 PCBsGhana1282014–2016∑ 7indicate PCBs 3.64In an electronic waste hot spot area, mean concentration of PCB was much higher than in non-spot area (4.43/0.03)Asamoah et al 2018…”

“…Unfortunately, due to PCBs’ resistance to decomposition processes, even today, most of the lakes and rivers are polluted (Paliwoda et al 2016 ; Rocheleau et al 2011 ). Furthermore, illegal burning of hazardous waste, for example, old transformers containing chlorinated hydrocarbons, increases this type of pollution in the environment (Asamoah et al 2018 ; Rivezzi et al 2013 ). Contamination is carried by atmospheric transport over long distances to the regions which are not in the immediate vicinity of industrial plants (Gevao et al 1998 ; Nelson et al 1998 ; Norstrӧm et al 2010 ) .…”

“…Therefore, the best way is to conduct analysis during at least two or three stages of lactation (Uemura et al 2008 ; Wang et al 2008 ). Analysis of environmental pollutions in women’s milk has been conducted by many researchers from the whole world, and in the most cases they focused on specific areas of the following states: Sweden (Lignell et al 2013 ), Spain (Schuhmacher et al 2007 ), the Czech Republic (Bencko et al 2004 ; Černá et al 2010 ), Hungary (Vigh et al 2013 ), Slovakia (Čechová et al 2017 ; Chovancová et al 2011 ), Russia (Mamontova et al 2017 ; Polder et al 2008 ), Ireland (Pratt et al 2012 ), Poland (Szywrińska and Lulek 2007 ; Škrbić et al 2010 ), Greece (Costopoulou et al 2006 ), Tunisia (Hassine et al 2012 ), Canada (Ryan and Rawn 2014 ), and China (Deng et al 2012 ; Zhang et al 2016 ; Zhang et al 2017 ), Ghana (Asamoah et al 2018 ), Netherlands, Norway (Čechová et al 2017 ), The Republic of Moldova (Tirisina et al 2017 ), France, Denmark, Finland (Antignac et al 2016 ), Croatia (Klinčić et al 2016 ). Generally, the number of published papers between 1979 and 2017 (searching in Scopus database; using keywords as “polychlorinated biphenyls,” “breast milk,” “human milk,” and “monitoring”) are 169, which include documents by country USA (38), Japan (20), Germany (19), Sweden (15), and China (13) (top five) (Scopus database, 8.04.2018).…”

“… Positive correlation between mother’s age and body burden for DL-PCBs and PCBs. (Deng et al 2012 ) 7 PCBs Ghana 128 2014–2016 ∑ 7indicate PCBs 3.64 In an electronic waste hot spot area, mean concentration of PCB was much higher than in non-spot area (4.43/0.03) Asamoah et al 2018 …”

“…It is important to improve the sample preparation stage and search for a method which will make it possible to analyze a lot of samples in a short time, with small amounts of solvents. An interesting approach was a QuEChERS technique (Luzardo et al 2013 ; Asamoah et al 2018 ) where the extract was cleaned by dispersive solid phase extraction (dSPE).…”