Experimental study of the toxicity of N-nitrosoamines when entering with food products for infants

Abstract

Introduction. Nitrosamines that are introduced with food produce both general toxic effects on a body and specific and remote ones (allergic, mutagenic, teratogenic, or carcinogenic effects). Nitrosamines that occurred in food products aimed for infants nutrition are priority contaminants for working out standard as per health risk criteria.Data and methods. We assessed impacts exerted by chemicals contained in canned meat for babies on 120 white Wistar rats. Our examined product was canned meat with N-nitrosamines in their minimum and maximum concentrations. For an approximation of the experiment to real conditions as it was only possible, we took rats with their age being comparable to that of human babies.Results. Laboratory animals from test groups were fed with canned meat that contained N-nitrosamines for 28 days. As a result, we detected significant discrepancies in AAT, ALT, and GGT levels in blood between an intact group and test ones. We established NOAEL to be equal to 0.00064 mg/kg a day. We also conducted an experiment aimed at determining the benchmark dose level (BDML) for N-nitrosamines introduced with canned meat for babies and applied its results to perform mathematic modeling for “dose - effect” dependence. This modeling allowed establishing authentic cause-and-effect relations between canned meat contamination with a total of N-nitrosamines and increased values of hepatotoxicity markers. We chose the lowest level out of all the control ones obtained via “dose - effect” dependence modeling; it was equal to 0.00063 mg/kg a day.Conclusion. Obtained reference dose (0.00063 mg/kg) for a total of N-nitrosamines introduced with canned meat for babies can be a starting point for determining MDM and MPL of total N-nitrosamines in examined food products