Health is monitoring pollution in the food chain through human milk sampling.
This year, the department has two projects under the Health Research, and one of which is the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Research Grant for monitoring levels of pollution in the Human Food Chain.
“We go out and we get breast milk samples from volunteer mothers,” said Temmy Temengil, Health Planning and Development Coordinator of MOH. Breast milk sampling, according to Temengil, is better than genetic testing because they found that human breast milk is the biggest indicator of pollution in the food chain — whether it’s the fish in the sea, the air she breathes, or the chemicals in the house.
The department received the grant of $21,000 from GEF last year. “It’s part of an overall grant for the whole region,” said Temengil.
The Health Research office already got breast milk samples from seven volunteer mothers. Next month, a coordinator from the University of the South Pacific is coming to Palau to pick them up for testing.
Human milk is recognized by the World Health Organization as the preferred matrix to monitor levels of persistent organic pollutants in the environment because it has several important advantages.
Bio-monitoring of human milk data can provide information on the exposure in food pollutants of the mother and the infants. These information will then serve as guidance to lessen the levels of these substances in food.
The volunteer mothers for the research were first time mothers under 30 years old; had healthy, normal pregnancy; have resided in Palau for at least 10 years, and are not residing in areas where persistent organic pollutants are known.
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