Experts: even minimal amounts of chemicals in the body can be detected

Modern diagnostic methods make it possible to detect minimal, even nanogram amounts of chemicals in our bodies, which allows us to better monitor exposure to various harmful substances, experts said at a press briefing in Warsaw.

A retired biochemist at the University of Quebec in Montreal prof. Krzysztof Krzystyniak said that so far the monitoring of the threat of chemicals has mainly consisted of mainly on the determination of their content in food, since 90 percent of the. Of them is found in food products.

-This method is still in use, but a new approach is the so-called “bio-monitoring”. biomonitoring, which is the detection of minimal amounts of chemicals, which allows us to assess the level of poisoning in the body and its health effects, as well as to determine the exceedance of doses considered dangerous, the specialist explained.

Data provided at the meeting show that there is a steady increase in the number of chemicals with which e come into contact with on a daily basis. The European Union produces about 30,000. chemicals in excess of one tonne per year. – Since World War II, the annual production of chemicals increased as much as 60-fold. There are already about a hundred trace but detectable amounts of chemicals or their metabolites in our bodies – emphasized Prof. Krzystyniak.

As an example, the specialist cited plastic packaging, from which rych substances such as bisphenols A and phthalates can penetrate food and our bodies. In Belgium, the average resident excretes 132 mg of this bisphenol per year in urine, in France – 127 mg, in Denmark 112 mg, and in Sweden – 71 mg. According to European Union standards, the annual amount of this substance in the body should not exceed 100 mg.

Prof. Krzystyniak argued that such substances penetrate into food. – When a family of five in Austria was persuaded to give up their use, after 2-4 months most of the metabolites in phthalate was undetectable in them. However, this is only one of many substances lingering in our bodies – added.

Prof. Mieczyslaw Obiedzinski of the Department of Food Science at the School of Head of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences admitted that much depends on the quality of plastic packaging and its manufacturer. With some More substances permeate the food packaging.

– Chemicals of this type can linger in our bodies for many years. Dioxins, for example, can persist in our country for up to 10 years, and the long-withdrawn insectob yczy DDT still lingers in the fatty tissue of some rych wasps b – said Prof. Obiedzinski.

Specialist zwr He drew attention to substances that re can act on hormone receptors in or otherwise b disrupt their secretion, which in turn can cause fertility disorders, liver damage and disruptive cation of the immune system.

– Much depends on the dose of harmful substances we ra permeates our body, according to Paracelsus’ saying that everything is a poison and nothing is a poison, because only the dose is a poison – emphasized the medical director of the laboratory Dr. Andrzej Marszałek at Synevo.

The specialist added that it is important to Also the total number of components in chemicals that ra enters the body. In France, under the PERICLES program with the product 79 pesticides have been isolated in food in occurring on the og ł in trace amounts. However, when seven types of In their mixtures containing only from dw ch up to six pesticides in, on kt re consumers are exposed, two of them were found to be highly cytotoxic (at the level of com rkowe), and one affected DNA.

Professors Krzystyniak and Obiedzinski and Dr. Marszalek write about it in the book „Human biomonitoring. In the prevention of environmental poisoning”. They admit that our bodies produce liver enzymes, which re so far on og ł can cope with nanogram or microgram quantities of chemicals in which they penetrate.

Experts point out that it is already worse for wasps b most susceptible to chemicals even in small amounts, such as pregnant women, young children, the elderly and people who are ill and have health complications.

Liver steatosis, for example, can impair the body’s detoxification capacity by up to 80 percent. It is suspected that some re chemicals can increase the risk of such diseases b civilization diseases like allergies and type 1 diabetes, and even contribute to obesity.