BOSTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- The first study to assess the impact of levels of acrylamide in the diet has found no evidence the chemical increases the risk of cancer.
The findings, released late Tuesday, contradict previous reports of a possible cancer risk that sparked global concern last year.
"The food items that had high levels of acrylamide were not associated with an excess risk of any of the cancers we studied," Lorelei Mucci, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, told United Press International.
Health agencies around the world became concerned last April when Swedish scientists made the surprise discovery that acrylamide -- known to cause cancer in rats -- was found in french fries, potato chips, breads, cereals and other foods cooked at high temperatures. The World Health Organization convened a panel of experts on the issue and they concluded it posed a serious concern and deserved further study.
However, Mucci and colleagues examined the dietary records of almost 1,000 cancer patients in Sweden and compared them with more than 500 healthy people and found levels of acrylamide consumed in a normal diet do not increase the risk of cancer of the bladder, colon, rectum or kidney. The study, which appears in the British Journal of Cancer, examined dietary intake of the chemical over a 5-year span.
"People with higher intake of acrylamide did not have a higher risk of cancer compared with people with lower intake," Mucci said. In addition, "there was no difference in acrylamide intake between the cancer group and those without cancer," she said.
"The original concern about acrylamide maybe isn't completely warranted," Mucci said. "But we need further study before we can make definitive conclusions about acrylamide in the diet," she said.
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the consumer advocacy group the Center for Science in the public Interest, faulted the study for being inadequate to detect the cancer-causing potential of acrylamide.
"It's not helpful at all in trying to establish whether or not acrylamide poses a cancer risk in humans," Jacobson told UPI. "Acrylamide probably causes on the order of half of 1 percent of all cancers and ... to do a study that tries to tease out the effect of acrylamide from all the other causes of cancer in this kind of a study is hopeless," he said.
"It may simply be impossible" to do a study showing the chemical causes cancer in humans, Jacobson said. "With most carcinogens, you can't prove that they cause cancer in humans. You have to rely on animal studies," he said. This is because it is very difficult to do controlled studies in humans "in which people are exposed to that one chemical and everything else is the same."
The Food and Drug Administration, which currently is investigating the level of acrylamide in food, acknowledged in a written statement last year that "acrylamide is a known animal carcinogen at high dose levels." The agency added, however, "It is not known whether acrylamide causes cancer in humans or animals at the very low levels found in foods."
The FDA has said consumers should not change their diet based on concerns about acrylamide.
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(Reported by Steve Mitchell, UPI Medical Correspondent, in Washington)
