Jaiswal et al. 2026 - Metal(loid)s in breast milk review

Jaiswal, Chauhan, and Srivastava review metal(loid) exposure through breast milk, with emphasis on arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury. The auto-fetch filename assigned the PDF to a mineral-water cadmium product gap, but the paper is human-milk exposure and toxicology context rather than mineral-water occurrence evidence. It overlaps topically with katrynska2026-human-milk-biomonitor-toxic-metals-review but has a distinct DOI and a separate summary table of breast-milk concentrations.

Key numbers

• Review scope: studies reporting quantitative concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Pb, and/or Hg in human breast milk worldwide were included.
• Abstract summary for Asia: reported tolerable daily intake of As exceeded in 75% of breast milk samples, with concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 100 ug/L.
• Abstract summary for Cd: 73% of breast-milk samples reportedly had elevated Cd (0.72 +/- 0.42), exceeding the TDIWHO for Cd. The abstract does not state the unit for the parenthetical Cd value.
• Abstract summary for multi-metal exceedance: in 40% of breast-milk samples, Cd, Cr, As, and Pb were all above World Health Organization limits.
• Cd reference-value summary: 8.4% of breast milk samples exceeded the RV95 Cd reference limit of 2.5 ug/L.
• Total Hg reference-value summary: total Hg exceeded the screening RV95 value of 3.5 ug/L in approximately 8% of breast milk samples, particularly among high-fish-eating individuals.
• Table 1 tolerable weekly intake values: As null; Cd 2.5 ug/kg body weight per week; Cr(III) null; Cr(VI) 0.05 ug/L as printed in the table footnote context; Pb null; methyl mercury 1.6 ug/kg body weight per week; total mercury 4 ug/kg body weight per week.
• Table 2, Freire et al. 2022, n = 242: As 0.4 ug/L, Cd 0.04 ug/L, Pb 0.1 ug/L, Hg 0.05 ug/L.
• Table 2, Sharafi et al. 2023, n = 100: As 1.96 ug/L, Cd 0.72 ug/L, Cr 41.07 ug/L, Pb 11.5 ug/L, Hg 0.31 ug/L.
• Table 2, Tahboub et al. 2021, n = 24: As 31.4 ug/L, Cd 6.31 ug/L, Cr 132 ug/L, Pb 77.4 ug/L.
• Table 2, Ekeanyanwu et al. 2020, n = 225: Cd 29 ug/L, Cr 19 ug/L, Pb 38 ug/L.
• Table 2, Khan et al. 2018, n = 125: As 0.50 ug/L, Cd 52 ug/L, Pb 95 ug/L, Hg 0.61 ug/L.
• Table 2, Gurbay et al. 2012, n = 64: As <7.6 ug/L, Cd 4.62 ug/L, Pb 391 ug/L.
• Table 2, Bjorklund et al. 2012, n = 60: As 0.55 ug/L, Cd 0.086 ug/L, Cr 0.30 ug/L, Pb 1.5 ug/L.
• Table 2, Al-Saleh et al. 2003, n = 372: Cd 1.73 ug/L, Pb 31.67 ug/L, Hg 3.10 ug/L.
• Narrative example from Gurbay et al. 2012: Pb concentrations were 391.45 +/- 269.01 ug/L; Cd was detected in 1 of 64 samples at 4.62 ug/L; As was below the limit of quantification, LOQ 7.6 ug/L, in all samples.
• Narrative example from Orun et al. 2011: median breast-milk Pb and Cd concentrations were 20.59 and 0.67 ug/L.
• Narrative urban/suburban examples: Cd 0.1 +/- 0.03 mg/L in urban women and 0.0 +/- 0.0 mg/L in suburban women; Pb 0.15 +/- 0.1 mg/L in urban river-estate women and 0.07 +/- 0.1 mg/L in suburban women.
• Maternal blood-lead example: Bede-Ojimadu et al. 2018 reported mean blood lead level 24.73 ug/dL in childbearing-aged females.
• Toxicology example: the review states that if As increases by 1 ug/L in breast milk, infant blood As concentration increases by 1.40 ug/dL, citing Linares et al. 2023.

Methods (brief)

The authors describe a literature review of breast-milk metal(loid) studies using search phrases that combined “breast milk” with metal and metalloid terms including arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium, concentration, exposure, and contamination. Included studies reported quantitative concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Pb, and/or Hg in human breast milk worldwide, with consideration given to analytical methods such as ICP-MS and atomic absorption spectrometry.

The review then summarizes maternal exposure routes through water, air, food, soil, groundwater, industrial emissions, contaminated crops, fish, and seafood. Table 2 compiles breast-milk mean concentrations from multiple published studies. The paper does not perform a new meta-analysis or primary laboratory measurement.

Implications

Certification: This paper should not enter product occurrence or HMTc benchmark pools. It is a review of human-milk exposure, transfer, and toxicology, and several values are secondary transcriptions from earlier breast-milk studies.

Courses: Useful for teaching source-to-infant transfer pathways and the difference between human biological exposure matrices and commercial infant-feeding products.

App: Can support educational context around breast-milk biomonitoring and environmental exposure routes, but not any consumer-facing advice to avoid breastfeeding.

Microbiome: No microbiome findings.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• arsenic-total
• cadmium
• chromium
• lead
• mercury
• mercury-methyl
• index

Verification notes

• DOI, title, authors, journal, license, abstract percentages, Table 1 intake values, Table 2 concentration rows, and selected narrative concentration examples were transcribed from the extracted PDF text.
• The source table is headed “mean concentration (ug l-1) in breast milk”; the page preserves that unit for Table 2 values. Where the narrative itself reports mg/L or ug/dL, those units are kept as printed and not converted.
• Arsenic and chromium are unqualified in the review table, so the page uses tAs and Cr. Mercury is mostly unqualified and tagged tHg; MeHg is included because the review separately lists methyl mercury in Table 1 and discusses methylmercury transfer.
• Products and ingredients are intentionally empty because this is an a4 human-exposure review. It does not measure mineral water, infant formula, or any commercial food product.
• The page records a near-duplicate/topical-overlap note with katrynska2026-human-milk-biomonitor-toxic-metals-review; the DOI and concentration table are distinct.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.