However, they say that nursing mothers can try to cut their exposure by avoiding non-stick pans and regularly vacuuming rooms, to keep them free of dust contaminated with PFCSs.
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Scientists have found that a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and interference with immune function build up in infants by 20 to 30 percent for each month they’re breastfed.
Perfluorinated alkylate substances are used to make products impervious to water, stains and grease.
“There is no reason to discourage breastfeeding, but these pollutants are transferred to the next generation at a vulnerable age”.
Grandjean further said that industries made a serious mistake by not considering the regulation of potentially harmful chemicals that could be excreted through breast milk.
The study appeared online in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
The researchers followed 81 children who were born in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, between 1997-2000, looking at levels of five types of PFASs in their blood at birth and ages 11 months, 18 months, and 5 years.
They found that children who were exclusively breast-fed experienced an increase in PFAS blood concentrations of as much as 30 percent each month, with lower increases among children who were partially breast-fed. It enhances the need for levels to be lowered in consuming water, as it affects mothers and their children’s health even more, as breastfeeding is highly needed in a newborn baby’s life and can not be properly and effectively replaced.
Independent studies have found PFASs can cause cancer and can hamper the immune and reproductive systems in lab animals.
In some cases, by the end of breastfeeding, children’s serum concentration levels of PFASs exceeded that of their mothers’. But, as Haelle pointed out, “It seems more than a little paranoid, then, to suggest that women the world over should cease exclusive breastfeeding at three months on the basis of a single study involving fewer than 100 people and finding increases in compounds that may or may not have serious health effects”.
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So there is evidence to demonstrate that many people have PFASs in their blood. According to researchers, chemicals in these group tend to bioaccumulate in food chains and can persist for a long time in the body. But this might not be the case for American children, Grandjean said, if new exposure comes through PFAS-containing rain gear, carpets and other textiles common in the Unites States.
