Organochlorine pesticide contaminations in human milk samples from women living in Amman, Jordan

✍ Scribed by Mahmoud A. Alawi; Nabil Ammari; Yousef Al-Shuraiki

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 384 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0090-4341
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00212281

✦ Synopsis

Concentration of 15 organochlorine pesticides were determined by capillary gas chromatography in 59 human milk samples collected from the general population during 1989/1990 in the Jordanian capital of Amman. In addition to hexachlorbenzene (HCB), three groups of organochlorine compounds namely, DDT and its metabolites, hexachlorcyclohexane (HCH-isomers) and the cyclopentadiene group (aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, and heptachlor epoxide) were analyzed. The results show that almost all samples contained HCB, beta-HCH, p,p'-DDE and p,p'-DDT, whereas p,p'-DDD, heptachlor, alpha-HCH, gamma-HCH and o,p'DDT were found in 42, 40, 33, 22 and 20 analyzed samples, respectively. The concentration of HCB, beta-HCH, p,p'-DDE, p,p'-DDT and heptachlor expressed on a milk-fat basis (median in mg/kg milk fat): 0.29, 0.4, 2.04, and 0.7 respectively. For the comparative purposes and in order to try to find the possible sources of mother-milk contaminations, different types of locally produced and imported cow milk samples were also analyzed for the same organochlorine compounds. Almost all types of tested milk were contaminated with p,p'-DDE.