15/11/2010 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Heavy metals are a major risk factor for human health according to Peter Jennrich, a German toxicologist, and Jean Huss (Luxembourg, SOC), responsible for drawing up a report on health hazards of heavy metals.
Many chronic diseases of civilisation are traceable to them – such as diabetes, allergies, cancers, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and depression. At a meeting of the PACE Social Affairs Committee in Paris, it was explained that everyone undergoes a small daily exposure to these heavy metals, arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, etc. in drinking water, food eg fish or via food additives, chemical fertilisers, dental amalgam, cosmetics and cigarettes.
According to converging studies there were no safe exposure limits, the more so as combined metal interactions were more important than the sum of the individual metal effects. Due to frequency, toxicity and exposure conditions, toxic metals are the most hazardous substances worldwide. They can cause as well as aggravate any disease of civilisation, the experts confirmed. Therefore regulatory and public health interventions must be developed and implemented to prevent and reduce heavy metal exposure beyond current levels in adults. The diagnosis and detoxification of heavy metal accumulations in humans should belong to the basic therapies for the treatment and the prevention of chronic illnesses, they concluded.
The report is due to be adopted by the Committee in March 2011 and will be debated by the Assembly in May 2011.