Lifelong exposure to low levels of food contaminants deadly for health

Scientists has claimed that being exposed to low levels of food contaminants could have serious health effects.

Brigitte Le Magueresse-Battistoni, a researcher involved in the work from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), said that this study adds evidences for rethinking the way of addressing risk assessment especially when considering that the human population is widely exposed to low levels of thousands of chemicals, and that the health impact of realistic mixtures of pollutants will have to be tested as well.

She said that indeed, one pollutant could have a different effect when in mixture with other pollutants.

Scientists used two groups of obese mice. Both were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose enriched diet, with one group receiving a cocktail of pollutants added to its diet at a very low dosage.

These pollutants were given to the mice throughout-from pre-conception to adulthood. Although the researchers did not observe toxicity or excess of weight gain in the group having received the cocktail of pollutants, they did see a deterioration of glucose tolerance in females, suggesting a defect in insulin signaling.

Study results suggest that the mixture of pollutants reduced estrogen activity in the liver through enhancing an enzyme in charge of estrogen elimination. In contrast to females, glucose tolerance was not impacted in males exposed to the cocktail of pollutants.

However, males did show some changes in liver related to cholesterol synthesis and transport. This study fuels the concept that pollutants may contribute to the current prevalence of chronic diseases including metabolic diseases and diabetes.

The new research has been published in Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal.