Environmental contaminants include the potentially toxic metals lead, cadmium and mercury; the chlorinated pesticides mirex, toxaphene and hexachlorobenzene; chlorinated dioxins and furans; polyaromatic hydrocarbons; and polychlorinated biphenyls. While many of these chemicals are resistant to degradation in the natural environment, they dissolve readily in oils and thus accumulate in the fatty...

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) can travel thousands of miles, accumulate in the food chain, and persist in the environment, taking as long as centuries to degrade. POPs are known to play a role in birth defects, cancer, immune system dysfunction, and reproductive problems in wildlife. While the effects of POPs on human health are unclear, many researchers believe that long-term exposure c...

This paper focuses on the risks of environmental carcinogenic and/or genotoxic contaminants in food. It describes, for each contaminant studied, the carcinogenicity and genotoxicity, the toxicological reference values, the exposure and the risk characterisation. The compounds studied were classified into 3 categories based on a risk assessment. Effects others than carcinogenicity and/or genotox...

BACKGROUND The North American Great Lakes are home to > 140 types of fish and are famous for recreational and commercial fishing. However, the presence of toxic substances has resulted in the issuance of fish consumption advisories that are typically based on the most restrictive contaminant. OBJECTIVES We investigated whether these advisories, which typically neglect the existence of a mixtu...

This paper assesses the impact on human health of exposure to current levels of environmental contaminants in the Canadian Arctic, and identifies the data gaps that need to be filled by future human health research and monitoring. The concept of health in indigenous groups of the Arctic includes social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. The harvesting, sharing and consumption of traditional f...

This study reports concentrations of three pesticide toxaphene congeners (CHBs; CHB-26, -50 and -62) from the blubber of ten adult, male white whales (Delphinapterus leucas) from Svalbard, Norway. The CHB congeners that occurred at the highest levels in the blubber of the white whales were, as expected, CHB-26 (4636+/-1992 (SD) ng/g l.w.) and CHB-50 (6579+/-2214 ng/g l.w.); CHB-62 (232+/-231 ng...

BACKGROUND The occupation of farming has been associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA); pesticides may account for this association, but there are few studies. OBJECTIVES We investigated associations between RA and use of pesticides in the Agricultural Health Study. METHODS The study sample was drawn from male pesticide applicators enrolled in 1993–1997 who provided questionnaire data at b...