Levels of organochlorine insecticides in milk of mothers from urban and rural areas of Botucatu, SP, Brazil.

Abstract

The use of organochlorine insecticides has been common since the forties. But this has become a serious problem of public health, due to the fact that insecticides accumulate in tissues owing to their fat-soluble character, their persistence in the environment and their accumulation in the food-chain. The continuous development of gas chromatographic techniques allowed the detection of ppb levels of these insecticide residues. Studies with laboratory animals have been useful to establish the toxicity of these compounds. Human milk can be used as an evaluation index of environmental contamination by these insecticides, although the main objective of its analysis is to determine the amounts ingested by children. When evaluating the levels of organochlorine insecticides in human milk it is useful to establish where the mothers live. Theoretically, mothers who live in a rural area have much more contact with these insecticides, because they work directly in agriculture. Therefore, the risk of exposure by their nursing children will be even greater. In Brazil, farmers do not have enough knowledge to measure the risks brought about by their indiscriminate use. In addition, government programs for the control of rural endemic diseases still make use of DDT and HCH on a large scale.