The Health Effects Of Aromatic Amines

The contents of this book are the proceedings of the ACS symposium, "Impact of Processing on Food Safety," which was held April 16-17, 1997, at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco, CA. This symposium brought together re searchers from diverse backgrounds in academia, government, and industry. Twenty speakers discussed topics ranging from the regulatory aspects of food processing to the microbiological and chemical changes in food during processing. The main goal of food processing is to improve the microbial safety of food by de stroying pathogenic and spoilage organisms. Food processing can also improve food safety by destroying or eliminating naturally occurring toxins, chemical contaminants, and antinutritive factors. Unfortunately, processing can also cause chemical changes that result in the formation of toxic or antinutritive factors. The purpose of this book is to summarize our knowledge of both the beneficial and deleterious effects of processing. Chapter I con siders the consumer's perceptions about food contaminants and food processing. Chapter 2 summarizes the effects of traditional and nontraditional processing methods on microor ganisms in food. Chapters 3-6 review the effects of processing on lipids (fatty acids and cholesterol) in food. Changes in the nutritive value of vitamins and minerals as a result of processing are discussed in chapter 7. Chapter 8 concentrates on how processing reduces the allergenicity of some foods.

This report considers the biological and behavioral mechanisms that may underlie the pathogenicity of tobacco smoke. Many Surgeon General's reports have considered research findings on mechanisms in assessing the biological plausibility of associations observed in epidemiologic studies. Mechanisms of disease are important because they may provide plausibility, which is one of the guideline criteria for assessing evidence on causation. This report specifically reviews the evidence on the potential mechanisms by which smoking causes diseases and considers whether a mechanism is likely to be operative in the production of human disease by tobacco smoke. This evidence is relevant to understanding how smoking causes disease, to identifying those who may be particularly susceptible, and to assessing the potential risks of tobacco products.

This volume of the IARC Monographs provides an assessment of the carcinogenicity of 18 chemicals present in industrial and consumer products or food (natural constituents, contaminants, or flavorings) or occurring as water-chlorination by-products. The compounds evaluated include the widely used plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate and the food contaminant 4-methylimidazole. In view of the limited agent-specific information available from epidemiological studies, the IARC Monographs Working Group relied mainly on carcinogenicity bioassays, and mechanistic and other relevant data to evaluate the carcinogenic hazards to humans exposed to these agents.

Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger. Covering a host of both notorious and little-known chemicals, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted. Each study situates chemical hazards in a long-term and transnational framework and demonstrates the importance of considering both the natural and the social contexts in which their histories have unfolded.