[nutritionfacts.org]

"Recently the diets of California children, ages two through seven, were analyzed to determine the cancer and non-cancer health effects from food contaminant exposures. Food may be the primary route of exposure to toxic heavy metals, persistent pollutants, and pesticides. Though food-borne toxic contaminants are a concern for all ages, they are of greatest concern for children, who are disproportionately impacted because they’re still developing and have greater intake of food and fluids relative to their weight. Pediatric problems that have been linked to preventable environmental toxin exposures include cancer, asthma, lead poisoning, neurobehavioral disorders, learning and developmental disabilities, and birth defects.

But the good news is that changing one’s diet can change one’s exposure. A diet high in fish and animal products, for example, results in greater exposure to persistent pollutants like DDT and dioxins and heavy metals than does a plant-based diet because these compounds bioaccumulate up the food chain, and plants are at the bottom of the food chain. Unfortunately that’s the not the kind of diet this sample of kids were eating. Cancer benchmark levels were exceeded by all 364 children for arsenic, the banned pesticide dieldrin, a metabolite of DDT called DDE, and dioxins.

Children exceeded safety levels by a greater margin than adults. This is especially of concern for children because all of these compounds are suspected endocrine disruptors and thus may impact normal development. Cancer risk ratios were exceeded by over a factor of 100 for arsenic and dioxins.

What foods were the worse? For preschoolers, the #1 food source of arsenic was poultry, though for their parents it was tuna. The #1 source for lead was dairy and for mercury it was seafood. And the #1 source of the banned pesticides and dioxins was dairy. They didn’t split up the groups by gender, but a similar study in Europe found that men had higher levels of some of these pollutants than women. For example, levels of the banned pesticide chlordane, but women who never breastfed were right up there alongside men, while the lowest levels were found in women who breastfed over 12 months. It is therefore likely that the lactation-related reduction in blood pollutant levels partly explains the lower body burdens among women compared with men. So cows can lower their levels by giving some to us, then we can pass it along to our children.

What non-cancer effects might some of these pollutants have? They can affect the immune system. Studies clearly demonstrate the ability of dioxins and related compounds to have a long-lasting and deleterious impact on immune function. This manifests as increased incidences of respiratory infections, ear infections, cough, and sore throat. At first most of the data was for during infancy, but now we have follow-up studies showing that the immunosuppressive effects of these toxins may persist into early childhood, so we should try to reduce our exposure. Because these pollutants accumulate in animal fat, consuming a plant-based diet, decreasing meat, dairy, and fish consumption may reduce exposure for children and adults alike."