Breastfeeding as an Exposure Pathway for Perfluorinated Alkylates

Abstract

Perfluorinated alkylate substances (PFASs) are widely used and have resulted in human exposures worldwide. PFASs occur in breast milk, and the duration of breastfeeding is associated with serum-PFAS concentrations in children. To determine the time-dependent impact of this exposure pathway, we examined the serum concentrations of five major PFASs in a Faroese birth cohort at birth, and at ages 11, 18, and 60 months. Information about the children’s breastfeeding history was obtained from the mothers. The trajectory of serum-PFAS concentrations during months with and without breastfeeding was examined by linear mixed models that accounted for the correlations of the PFAS measurements for each child. The models were adjusted for confounders such as body size. The duration of exclusive breastfeeding was associated with increases of most PFAS concentrations by up to 30% per month, with lower increases during partial breast-feeding. In contrast to this main pattern, perfluorohexane sulfonate was not affected by breast-feeding. After cessation of breastfeeding, all serum concentrations decreased. This finding supports the evidence of breastfeeding being an important exposure pathway to some PFASs in infants.

Examining confounding by diet in the association between perfluoroalkyl acids and serum cholesterol in pregnancy

“…In terms of magnitude the increase in serum cholesterol observed for both PFOS and PFOA was slightly lower but still comparable to the increase observed among women with high saturated fat intake (see Table 3). In sensitivity analyses the associations between PFOS and PFOA with serum cholesterol were examined among nulliparous (n¼ 490) and parous (n ¼364) women as previous breastfeeding has been shown to be a strong determinant of PFOS and PFOA concentrations (Mogensen et al, 2015). In these analyses similar associations between PFOS and PFOA and serum cholesterol were observed for both nulliparous and parous women (data not shown).…”

Association between perfluoroalkyl substance exposure and asthma and allergic disease in children as modified by MMR vaccination

“…Much previous research has focused on pre-natal exposure, but both the pre- and post-natal periods are known to be important in establishing an immune deviation from T H 2 to T H 1 skewed immunity (Romagnani 2014), and in this study, associations were found only with post-natal exposure. In addition, it has been established that children are highly exposed to PFAS in early life through breastfeeding (Mogensen et al 2015), emphasizing the need to further study the effects of post-natal PFAS exposure.…”

Characterization of Adipogenic Activity of House Dust Extracts and Semi-Volatile Indoor Contaminants in 3T3-L1 Cells

“…As such, humans are exposed to complex mixtures of contaminants throughout development. Newborn cord blood often contains hundreds of contaminants 18, 19 , and exposure continues via oral routes such as breast-feeding 20, 21 and from inhalation and dermal contact in indoor environments 14, 22–24 in early life.…”