| Congener-specific Levels of Dioxins and Dibenzofurans in U.S. Food and Estimated Daily Dioxin Toxic Equivalent Intake Arnold Schecter,
1
James Startin,
2
Christopher Wright,
2
Mitchell Kelly,
2
Olaf Päpke,
3
Anton Lis,
3
Michael Ball,
3
and James R. Olson
4
1
Department of Preventive Medicine, Clinical Campus, State University of New York Health Science Center-Syracuse, Binghamton, NY 13903 USA
2
CSL Food Science Laboratory, Norwich Research Park, Colney, Norwich NR4 7UQ UK
3
ERGO Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Albert-Einstein Ring 7, 22761 Hamburg, Germany
4
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14214 USA Abstract
Food, especially meat, milk, and fish, is the immediate source of almost all polychlorinated dibenzo- p -dioxins (PCDDs) , dibenzofurans (PCDFs) , and dioxinlike compounds in the general population. To estimate intake of these highly toxic compounds, we performed congener-specific dioxin analyses for the first time on U.S. food for 18 dairy, meat, and fish samples from a supermarket in upstate New York. 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo- p -dioxin (TCDD, "dioxin") toxic equivalents (TEqs) on a wet weight basis for the dairy products ranged from 0.04 to 0.7 ppt, meat TEqs ranged from 0.03 to 1.5 ppt, and fish TEqs ranged from 0.02 to 0.13 ppt. Previous human breast milk and infant formula analyses were used with the current preliminary food data to estimate a range of dioxin intake for Americans. Average daily food intake of TEqs for an adult weighing 65 kg was estimated to be between 0.3 and 3.0 pg/kg body weight, for a total of 18-192 pg TEq, using 1986 American consumption rates. Due to the relatively high level of PCDDs and PCDFs commonly found in human breast milk from American women and from women in other industrial countries, a nursing infant may consume an average of 35-53 pg TEq/kg body weight/day in its first year of life. This may be compared with the current U.S. EPA virtually safe dose of 0.006 pg TCDD/kg body weight per day over a 70-year lifetime, based on an upper limit cancer risk of 10 -6 , or the 10 pg/kg/day used by some European government agencies. Key words : dibenzofurans, dioxins, food contamination, human milk contamination, toxic equivalents. Environ Health Perspect 102:962-966 (1994) http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1994/102-11/schecter.html
Address correspondence to A. Schecter, Department of Preventive Medicine, Clinical Campus, State University of New York Health Science Center-Syracuse, 88 Aldrich Avenue, Binghamton, NY 13903 USA. A portion of this work was funded by the Warsh-Mott Legacy of the CS Fund. Thanks are extended to Avi Silber, Frank Leu, and Ruth Stento for manuscript preparation. Received 23 May 1994 ; accepted 30 August 1994.
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