Duration of breastfeeding and serum PCB 153 concentrations in children

Abstract

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals which, because of their lipophilic properties, are abundant in human breast milk. Breastfed infants are therefore at risk of being exposed to considerable amounts of PCBs. The commonly used exposure estimations, based solely on breast milk PCB levels and duration of breastfeeding, may lead to exposure misclassification. To improve assessments of exposure to PCBs, we determined PCB 153 serum concentration, as a model substance for PCBs, at the critical time of weaning for each child in 305 breastfed infants from 5 single time point concentration measurements spread over 7 years and data on duration of breastfeeding, using an earlier developed model of the system type. We approximated the dependence of PCB 153 serum concentration, Ctbf, adjusted to cord serum concentration, C0, on nursing period, by a polynomial function Ctbf/C0=0.596+0.278t−0.0047t2 which reliably predicts exposure to PCB 153 of breastfed infants, important for assessment of dose-outcome relationships. Adjustment of current serum concentrations to cord serum concentration improved validity of exposure assessment.

The spatial distribution of congener-specific human PCB concentrations in a PCB-polluted region

“…The food chain is currently considered the primary source of human exposure to PCBs (ATSDR 2014;Sonneborn et al, 2008). Transfer from mothers to infants is also an important exposure route, as PCBs readily cross the placenta (Lancz et al, 2015a), and transmission also occurs via breastfeeding (Lancz et al, 2015b). PCBs continue to be measurable in a high proportion of samples from the general population, including pregnant women (CDC, 2018).…”

Environmental exposure to organochlorine pesticides and deficits in cochlear status in children

“…The correlations (Table 2) show that the exposure patterns for particular toxicants at 6 months were similar to prenatal as their concentrations in these two time intervals were mostly correlated (correlation coefficients in bold in Table 2, section prenatal vs. 6 months). We have recently shown however (Lancz et al 2014), that as a result of breast feeding the exposure magnitude at 6 months is about twice compared to prenatal. The double exposure might have changed the direction of the outcome.…”

DPOAEs in infants developmentally exposed to PCBs show two differently time spaced exposure sensitive windows

“…From the examination at 45 months we observed two exposure sensitive windows, the first one linked to the relatively constant PCB cord serum concentration of prenatal period and the other one coinciding with increasing and peaking PCB serum concentration in breast fed infants (Lancz et al, 2015). It is difficult to explain the mechanism of the increase of DPOAE amplitudes during the first sensitive exposure window.…”