Dietary Patterns and Plasma Concentrations of Perfluorinated Compounds in 315 Norwegian Women: The NOWAC Postgenome Study

This study was undertaken to assess the impact of self-reported dietary habits and lifestyle on the plasma concentration of selected perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in a representative group of 315 middle-aged Norwegian women (48-62 years of age). Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS; median: 20 ng/mL), perfluorooctanoate (PFOA; 4.4 ng/mL), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS; 1.0 ng/mL), and perfluorononanoate (PFNA; 0.81 ng/mL) were detected in more than 90% of the plasma samples. By using multivariate data analysis, women who ate fish or "fish eaters" (high consumers of fish and shellfish) were identified as having increased plasma concentrations of PFOS, PFNA, and PFHxS. Younger women with a larger household and a "western" diet consisting of rice, pasta, water, white and red meat, chocolate, snacks, and pastries had lower concentrations of the same compounds. No specific food cluster was associated with increased PFOA concentrations, indicating that the dietary impact on PFOA concentrations was different from that of the other investigated PFCs. This study confirms that the total diet is a major contributor to human body burdens of selected PFCs, but the identification of dietary predictors is highly dependent on the dietary habits within the population studied due to the ubiquitous presence of PFCs in many kinds of food.