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Children do not like arsenic in their food

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 22, pages 424–425 (2012)Cite this article

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In the last Exposure Science Digest, Landrigan and Goldman emphasized the importance of the first US environmental statute (the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act) in regulating the use of pesticides in order to protect children from their exposure.1 Although the FQPA and the past inspiring report from the National Academy of Science (NAS) focused on infants and children exposure to pesticides, the four principles characterizing children's vulnerability may concern the exposure to other xenobiotics as well. For example, the NAS-guiding principles should be kept in mind especially in those countries where the maximum tolerable limit for a carcinogenic xenobiotic, such as inorganic arsenic (iAs), is not regulated by law.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel on contaminants in the food chain (CONTAM Panel) has summarized the results of several risk-assessment studies related to the presence of iAs in food in a scientific opinion (EFSA,2 2009). EFSA has also determined that diet is the main source of arsenic for infants and children: fish and fish products, cereal grains and grain products, fruit and vegetables juices, baby rice, drinking water, milk and infant formula and cocoa powder were identified as the main food containing the highest amount of total arsenic. EFSA concluded that infants and children up to 3 years of age are often more highly exposed to toxic chemicals than adults when considering the food intake in relation to their body weight (bw) (in keeping with the first NAS principle). For example, the iAs intake for an infant (6 months, 6.1 kg bw) assumed to consume breast milk, milk-based infant formula (800 g/day) or rice-based food (90 g/day) is estimated to be 0.03, 0.12 and 1.67 μg/kg bw, respectively (EFSA,2 2009). In children, the daily intake of iAs diminishes with increasing age as they consume less food per kg bw. The median of the 50th percentile intake of arsenic across Europe, calculated by applying the upper occurrence values, ranged from 0.51 μg/kg bw/day for a 14-year-old child to 1.05 μg/kg bw/day for a 3-year-old baby and 1.39 μg/kg bw/day for a 1-year-old infant. In the latter case, the intake of iAs is more than three times higher than the corresponding figure of exposure for adult populations (estimated to be 0.3–0.4 μg/kg bw/day). In a cross-sectional study, Tsai et al.3 reported that for infants under 18 months an early-life exposure to iAs may influence development and lead to growth retardation, impaired immune function and difficulty in performing memory and switching attention tasks. Meharg et al.4 have been the first to report the threat of feeding babies with baby rice obtained from the UK supermarket chains. In UK, the intake of iAs for a 1-year-old baby (9.25 kg) is 0.21 μg/kg/day at median (0.34 μg/kg/day at the 95th percentile) from 20 g baby rice portion, higher than the maximum level assumed for adults from drinking water (0.17 μg/kg/day) when water's intake was expressed on a body-weight basis. For a child eating 2–3 servings per day, this figure is dramatically multiplied. The EFSA Panel concluded that the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 15 μg/kg bw, established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, is no longer acceptable. Even though the panel did not propose an alternative PTWI value, it identified a range of values for the 95% lower confidence limit of the benchmark dose of 1% extra risk (BMDL01) instead of a single reference point for use in the risk characterization for iAs. The BMDL01 values for the relevant health endpoints (i.e. skin lesions, cancers of the skin, urinary bladder and lung), ranged from 0.3 to 8 μg/kg bw/day. EFSA estimated that dietary (food and water) daily exposures to iAs for average (from 0.13 to 0.56 μg/kg bw) and high-level consumers (from 0.37 to 1.22 μg/kg bw) across 19 European countries are within the range of the BMDL01 values identified (EFSA, 2009). Thus, the possibility of a risk to some classes of consumers cannot be excluded. Children, with an exposure from two- to three-fold that of adults, appear to be the most vulnerable category that needs a specific protection, also because other rice-based products consumed during childhood, such as crackers, biscuits, crisped and puffed rice cereals, pasta, noodles, puddings, plain polished and whole-grain rice, might contribute to increase in the iAs intake.

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  1. IRCCS, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Piazza S. Onofrio, Rome, Italy

    Letizia Da Sacco & Andrea Masotti

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  1. Letizia Da Sacco
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Correspondence to Andrea Masotti.

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Da Sacco, L., Masotti, A. Children do not like arsenic in their food. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 22, 424–425 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2012.10

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