Background: Previous studies indicate that concentrations of arsenic in breast milk are relatively low even in areas with high drinking-water arsenic. However, it is uncertain whether breastfeeding leads to reduced infant exposure to arsenic in regions with lower arsenic concentrations.
Objective: We estimated the relative contributions of breast milk and formula to arsenic exposure during early infancy in a U.S. population.
Methods: We measured arsenic in home tap water (n = 874), urine from 6-week-old infants (n = 72), and breast milk from mothers (n = 9) enrolled in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study (NHBCS) using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Using data from a 3-day food diary, we compared urinary arsenic across infant feeding types and developed predictive exposure models to estimate daily arsenic intake from breast milk and formula.
Results: Urinary arsenic concentrations were generally low (median, 0.17 μg/L; maximum, 2.9 μg/L) but 7.5 times higher for infants fed exclusively with formula than for infants fed exclusively with breast milk (β = 2.02; 95% CI: 1.21, 2.83; p < 0.0001, adjusted for specific gravity). Similarly, the median estimated daily arsenic intake by NHBCS infants was 5.5 times higher for formula-fed infants (0.22 μg/kg/day) than for breastfed infants (0.04 μg/kg/day). Given median arsenic concentrations measured in NHBCS tap water and previously published for formula powder, formula powder was estimated to account for ~ 70% of median exposure among formula-fed NHBCS infants.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that breastfed infants have lower arsenic exposure than formula-fed infants, and that both formula powder and drinking water can be sources of exposure for U.S. infants.
1Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA; 2Department of Biological Sciences, and 3Trace Element Analysis Laboratory, Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA; 4Department of Epidemiology and Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA; 5Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona, USA
*These authors contributed equally to this work
Recommended Citation:
Courtney C. Carignan,1,2* Kathryn L. Cottingham,et al. Estimated Exposure to Arsenic in Breastfed and Formula-Fed Infants in a United States Cohort[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2015-01-01,Volume 123(Issue 5):500