PAHs in Indian diet: Assessing the cancer risk

Food products such as bread, biscuits, tea, coffee, oils, chocolates, grapes, pepper and fishes belonging to different categories represent a significant part of everyday diet in India and other countries having variable cooking techniques. In this study, we evaluated cancer risks of long term exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) through consumption of these products for eight societal groups in India. Total concentrations of PAHs in these products from India ranged from 0.18 to 61967 μg kg^-1 and the cancer risk values for the eight sections of Indian population ranged between 7.63E-10 to 5.05E+00, indicating product specific distribution of risk from non-significant to significant levels. Cereals, vegetables and decoctions contributed majorly to cancer risk and the most susceptible group identified was children. The spread of risk estimates followed Burr and Exponential distributions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to develop information on the health risk faced by Indian population through dietary PAHs.