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Environment
PAH:
food that's more dangerous than pollution
Adolf Vyskocil,
a researcher in the Department of Occupational and Environmental
Health at Université de Montréal, studies risk factors
associated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in children.
The formation of PAHs derives from the incomplete combustion of
organic matter. Wood heating, food, automobile exhaust, cigarettes
and several industrial processes are sources of PAH. These are increasingly
suspected of being associated with lung and bladder cancer.
Until recently,
researchers assumed that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and pyrene,
a component of PAHs, found in animals and humans came essentially
from pollution. But environmental exposure actually represents a
drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of PAHs attributed to
food consumption. This is what a study conducted by Adolf Vyskocil
on twenty children aged six years and under has shown. The sample
was made up of children attending Montréal day care centres,
one located close to the Decarie expressway and the other in a so-called
"green" area of the city. Urine tests were done to compare
levels of PAHs in the body with levels in the air and ground.
The data show
that the proportion of PAHs in the ground and air (12 times higher
outside the day-care centre located in the polluted area) did not
cause any significant difference between the two groups of children.
However, the concentration of pyrene linked to food consumption
is significantly larger than the concentration associated with environmental
exposure. The daily quantity of pyrene estimated from absorption
of food was 167 and 186 nanograms for the two groups-troubling figures
when compared with pollution levels in the City of London, where
a PAH level of 166 nanograms per cubic meter was recorded. The researcher,
who is funded by the Quebec Health Research Fund, is currently doing
work on the relationship between food and pyrene.
Researcher
: Adolf Vyskocil
Phone : (514) 343-6146
Funding : Quebec Health Research Fund (FRSQ), Scientific and Environmental
Affairs, Division of NATO, Brussels, Belgium
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