Joining the Worldwide Fight for Safer Food

Environmental epidemiologist Katarzyna “Kasia” Kordas has been researching the effects of exposure to chemicals and toxic metals for decades.

Last summer, at the invitation of the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the UB faculty member joined an international  team of experts across a range of fields to discuss what these global bodies are calling a monumental public health crisis: the complex links between food-borne hazards, food safety and nutrition.

The meeting, held in Vienna, Austria, convened experts from 14 countries across three continents to confront the growing challenge, for which there has not been much research, since food-borne hazards and nutrition have long been treated as separate issues. But, as a recap of the meeting noted, contaminants like heavy metals, microplastics and pesticides can impair growth, gut health, hormone regulation and nutrient absorption, contributing to chronic diseases and widespread malnutrition.

Kordas gave a presentation on heavy metals in foods and what researchers currently know about how food contamination affects children’s health.

“For some metals, like mercury, the effects are more well-known because there is a single, important food source, that being seafood,” she says. “But for other metals where the sources are more dispersed, it is more difficult to pin down how much exposure children are getting from foods, and what the health effects are of these exposures.”

The group has continued to meet since the initial session in Vienna, and Kordas says there are plans to publish a review paper and then further develop research projects aimed at tackling these critical issues.