POPs in breast milk: breast-fed infants' health risk

Purpose - Breast milk is considered the optimum food for infants during infancy. Pesticide residues may get transferred to infants through breast feeding and pose various serious health hazards. This paper aims to enumerate various pesticides that are present in breast milk and pose potential health risk to breast-fed infants. Design/methodology/approach - An attempt is been made to highlight various sources of pesticide exposure, their mechanism of transfer to breast milk and the possible health hazards to breast-fed infants. Techniques to reduce the incidence of pesticides in foods are also outlined. Findings - The exposure of lactating mothers to pesticides from various sources and their detection in breast milk poses various health risks to breast-fed infants. Infants and younger children are more prone to pesticide poisoning than adults due to quantitative differences in absorption, metabolism, detoxification and excretion. Practical implications - Adopting precautionary measures and minimising the application of persistent organic pollutants, breast milk could be prevented from pesticide exposure and thus could be recommended safe for infant feeding. Originality/value - The paper shows that the protection of mothers from pesticide exposure would reduce the incidence of pesticides in breast milk, thus conferring health safety to breast-fed infants.