Fact sheet for medical professionals
Brian L. Gulson, Graduate School of the Environment,
Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109
Owing to its unique nutritional and immunological characteristics, human milk is the most important food source for infants. Breast milk can, however, also be a pathway of maternal excretion of toxic elements such as lead.
These toxic substances impact most severely on the newly born at a time of rapid development of the central nervous system (Astrup-Jensen and Slorach, 1991). Apart from contributions from maternal sources during pregnancy such as from the skeleton (Gulson et al., 1997, 1998), other potential lead sources for the infant are mainly dietary, that is, from breast milk, infant formulae and baby foods.
Recently, Gulson et al. (1998) showed that there was an increased and sustained mobilization of maternal skeletal lead during lactation compared with during pregnancy, from which arises the question: Are the infants at more risk from breast feeding than from formula feeding?