Abstract
Occupational exposures and current diet are both sources of environmental contaminants that can be transferred in the mother’s body. These chemicals can definitely penetrate to the developing foetus and the nursing infant from contaminated breast milk during the lactation period. Nowadays, one of the special interests is the exposure of new-borns to toxic chemicals such as pesticides and antibiotics reported in human milk due to their potential harms, especially developmental deficits in early childhood. The aim of our current study was to assess the occurrence of pesticide residues and antibiotic residues contamination in breast milk collected from Syrian refugee lactating mothers residing in North Lebanon Camps. A total of 120 breast milk samples (40 in triplicate) were collected from camps in Akkar, North Lebanon using an electrical pump. A survey was administrated to determine socio-demographic characteristics, dietary and smoking habits and medical history of participating lactating mothers. The milk samples were analysed for the presence of antibiotic residues and pesticide residues using liquid and gas chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy (LC-MS/MS) and Gas Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). This study reported the absence of antibiotic residues in 96.66% of our samples (n = 120) and the presence of pesticides residues in only 5% of our total breast milk sample. Our results considered the breast milk collected from Syrian refugee lactating mothers as safe from chemical contamination. It is worth conducting more studies on other Syrian refugee camps to test the effect of camp living conditions on breast milk safety.
Highlights
Breastfeeding is admitted to present numerous beneficial health effects and it is vastly considered as the best suitable food for the baby [1]
While assessing the smoking habits, it was shown that 100% of nursing mothers had never smoked before or after pregnancy since Syrian culture inhibits women from smoking, but they were randomly exposed to second hand smoking from their husbands
While assessing the antibiotic residues in the breast milk samples (Table 5), the results showed that only 3.33% of the samples were contaminated with antibiotic residues
Summary
Breastfeeding is admitted to present numerous beneficial health effects and it is vastly considered as the best suitable food for the baby [1]. The World Health Organization recommends to exclusively breastfeed for six months after birth [2]. The European recommendation varies among countries between four and six of exclusive breastfeeding [3]. In Lebanon and Syria, two Middle Eastern Arab countries sharing almost the same socio-demographic characteristics including religion and language, a percentage of 10% was shown for an exclusive breastfeeding rate at six months [4]. The absence of support for breastfeeding by social workers and health care providers were considered the main reasons for low prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding. It could be due to psychological reasons such as mother’s emotional stress and the perceived breast-milk inadequacy [6]
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