Risk analysis of dioxin in human breast milk

Shinai Choi, Jee-Yeun Han, Jongsei Park

LabFrontier, Co., Ltd.
KSBC bldg. #Mt. 111-8, Iui-dong, Paldal-ku, Suwon, Kyounggi-do 442-270, KOREA.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have spread throughout the global environment to threaten human health and damage ecosystems, with evidence of POPs contamination in wildlife, human blood, and breast milk documented worldwide.

Breast milk is an ideal medium for assessing exposures to POPs. POPs enter humans largely as contaminants of dietary animal products, where they sequester in adipose tissue, serum, and breast milk and equilibrate at similar levels on a fat weight basis. With long (5-10 year) half-lives, POPs persist in humans and in breast milk as they do in the environment. Breast milk mimics sediments of rivers or lakes as a storage reservoir for POPs, serves as an indicator of past human exposures or environmental conditions, and complements environmental monitoring data in air, water, soil, and food.(Hooper K. et al., 1999).

In Korea, it is reported that the average concentrations of total PCDD/Fs and Co-PCBs in breast milk were 10.108 pg TEQ/g lipid (n=43) collected at 1st day after delivery, 2.432pgTEQ/g lipid (n=21) at 5th pay, 2.105 pg TEQ/g lipid (n=19) at 30th day, and 1.605 pg TEQ/g lipid (n=21) at 100th day, 1.351 pg TEQ/g lipid (n=14) at 150th day , and 1.103 pg TEQ/g lipid (n=6) at 200th day(KIST, 2003). Based on these results, the average lifetime daily exposure dose(LADD) is estimated 1.77E-2pg/kg/day considering breast milk intake rate and body weight of Korean. The LADD is lower than 1~4 pg/kg bw-day as TDI(tolerable daily intake, WHO).