Bavarian breast milk survey--pilot study and future developments

For more than 20 years the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority has carried out breast milk analyses of persistent pesticides and selected organohalogen compounds. On the one hand, continuous monitoring of the levels of these chemicals in human breast milk shows a decreasing trend over these two decades. On the other hand, the number of samples sent to our institution for analysis has continuously decreased. Given the unreliable data on burden of environmental chemicals as well as the toxicologically outdated spectrum of analyzed substances, a new concept for the monitoring of breast milk has been developed and tested within a pilot study. We present here first results on PCDD, PCDF and dioxin-like PCB (dl-PCB) concentrations in breast milk of 43 women living in Bavaria, Germany. The average concentration of PCDD, PCDF and dl-PCB were 4.93, 4.98 and 9.92 pg WHO-TEQ/g fat, respectively. The new surveillance program (Bavarian Monitoring of Breast Milk, BAMBI) should track time trends of chemicals' concentrations in breast milk, while also monitoring new chemicals, such as PBDE or PFC, on which little or no German data exist.