Aflatoxin – A Powerful Killer
Aflatoxin is a very potent human carcinogen, which means you can get cancer after ingesting for a variable period of time food with aflatoxin.
But what is aflatoxin? Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring micotoxin produced by a fungus (mold) called Aspergillus. This mold is near ubiquitous in the natural environment, contaminating especially corn, rice, cottonseed and peanuts, as well as coffee and cocoa beans. The first time this mold was accused of killing was in 1960 more than 100,000 young turkeys on poultry farms in England died in the course of a few months from an apparently new disease associated with eating something named Brazilian peanut meal. In 1961, scientist discovered that the killer was a little fungus called Aspergillus flavus.
Since then, aflatoxin became probably the best known and most intensively researched mycotoxin in the world. Humans are exposed to it by eating foods contaminated with Aspergillus. If the food is heavily contaminated, people get an acute, fatal disease called aflatoxicosis. The syndrome is characterized by vomiting, abdominal pain, pulmonary edema, convulsions, coma, and death with cerebral edema and fatty involvement of the liver, kidneys, and heart.
Long time exposure to low levels of aflatoxin increases the risk of having liver cell carcinoma (hepatocarcinoma). Epidemiological studies done in Asia and Africa have demonstrated that aflatoxin is the cause of the huge incidence of hepatocarcinoma in poor countries where people eat peanuts contaminated with Aspergillus. Procedures used in the processing of beans help to reduce contamination of the resulting food product. This is because although aflatoxins are stable to moderately stable in most food processes, they are unstable in processes such as those used in making tortillas that employ alkaline conditions or oxidizing steps.
In 1988, the International Agency for Research on Cancer placed aflatoxin on the list of human carcinogens.
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