Title: Persistent organic pollutants in Colombia; Levels, challenges, and future perspectives

Abstract

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are persistent in the environment, bioaccumulate and biomagnify throughout the food chain, and adversely affect human health and wildlife. Under the Global Monitoring Plan 2 project, Colombia monitored the POPs concentration in core matrices such as air, breast milk, and fish. Moreover, as an independent study, polybrominated diphenyl ethers were measured in food commercialized and consumed by the population. Air monitoring was made with passive air samplers deployed between January 2017 and January 2019 in Medellin, Colombia. POPs in breast milk were quantified in a national combined sample. The national combined sample was made with 50 individual samples of primiparous and healthy mothers from Colombia. The fish samples were taken from the two principal rivers of the country (Magdalena and Cauca) and the Gulf of Uraba. Moreover, ten shrimp and ten animal-origin oil samples were taken from Medellin markets. Air monitoring results suggested releases of DDT in the city or surrounding areas despite this pollutant being banned many years ago in the country (Figure 1). Moreover, the highest concentration quantified in breast milk was 69.1 ng•g-1 lipid for DDE (a byproduct of DDT). Furthermore, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid and perfluorooctanoic acid were quantified in fish samples from the Magdalena and Cauca rivers and Gulf of Uraba for the first time in the country, with mean values of 36.1 pg•g-1 for perfluorooctane sulfonic and 8.35 pg•g-1 for perfluorooctanoic acid. Moreover, the concentration of one shrimp sample was 0.012 ± 0.0056 ng•g−1 of BDE 100. The project results allowed establishing the baseline of some pollutants in the air city against which future temporal trends can be assessed. Additionally, these results could strengthen Colombia’s efforts to increase the practice of breastfeeding. Finally, the results suggest that shrimps and animal-origin oils are not a significant source of exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the Medellín population.