Dietary exposure to barium in a young (18-23 yrs-old) population in Leicester (England).

Résumé

BACKGROUND AND AIM: To assess dietary exposure to barium (Ba), a poorly monitored contaminant, in undergraduate students at De Montfort University (DMU, England). METHOD: Dietary intake was collected from 111 (20.45 ± 1.16 yrs-old; 78 female) DMU students using a validated FFQ that also records portion size. Ba was analysed in scalp-hair from 73 of these participants (58 female) by ICP-MS (LoD=0.212 µg/g). RESULTS: The presence of Ba was much higher in female participants’ hair although without significance [p-value=0.0533; data presented as median and IQR, in µg/g: 2.839 (1.378, 3.929) vs. 1.143 (0.789, 2.538)] possibly due to low number of male participants. Ba was positively correlated with egg (r=0.2774; p0.05) and meat (r=0.4023; p0.01) intake in females, and negatively with the intake of energy drinks for all participants (r=-0.2305; p0.05). However, our results are unclear as the intake of meat and eggs were significantly higher (p-value=0.016; 271.55 vs. 193.06) and higher (p-value=0.860; 17.62 vs. 16.70; all in g/day) in male counterparts. The consumption of energy drinks might partly explain our results as it was significantly higher in males (p-value=0.0024; 33.48 vs. 10.67 g/day). Drinking water could be a significant source of Ba, the intake of water was also higher in male participants (1931.2 vs. 1674.1 g/day). The applications of Ba in cosmetic and hair dye products might also have contributed to the higher presence of this contaminant in females, although use of cosmetics was not recorded and hair samples only collected from participants that did not use hair dyes before the sampling. CONCLUSIONS: The high levels of Ba found in the hair of some DMU students should be further explored as they suggest some exposure, since the ranges observed (0.364-210.35 µg/g) were similar/higher than those reported in exposed young adults through polluted drinking water (2.9-50 µg/g; 27.1 years-old) living in Thar Jath region, South Sudan.