Joint International Conference on Long-term Experiments ...

THE ROLE OF WATER QUALITY IN INFANTILE ALIMENTATION
Andrei Csép, Draghici Sonia, Lenard Ildiko, Mirela Indries, Nicoleta Negrut
University of Oradea, Faculty of Medicine and Farmacy
ABSTRACT
The study makes concrete reference to the risks linked to the water consume, which doesn’t
correspond from a chemical point of view, through the presence and the concentration over
the limits admitted by nitrates and nitrites in the water used at milk powder preparation,
distributed through the national programme and used in the alimentation of babies.
Keywords: water, nitrate content, intoxication, Faecal coliforms, Faecal streptococci
INTRODUCTION
Nitrate intoxication was firstly described and named well water intoxication in 1945
(quoted from Biro O.). It is also known under the name of infantile intoxication, infantile
cyanotic methemoglobinemia, or the newborn’s blue disease, because the dominant
symptom is cyanosis, symptom that can lead to the rapid diagnostication of the disease.
(Chiotan, 1999)
The nitrates enter the organism altogether with the foodstuff of vegetal and animal origin,
but mainly through drinking water. They can have a double origin in water:
a) They can come from soils rich in nitrogen salts, when their origin is considered natural;
b) As a consequence of water pollution, that comes either directly from nitrates (e.g.
industrial and agricultural pollution with nitrogen-based fertilizers), or from organic
substances, which through decomposition release nitrates.
Nitrates are not toxic by themselves. To achieve this quality, they have to undergo a
reduction process and be transformed in nitrites.
Transformation may take place:
a) Exogenously (in water), but only in the warm periods of the year, and in the presence
of a reductive flora;
b) Endogenously (in organism), under the action of the same reductive flora;
This reductive flora either gets up in the distal digestive tract in the proximal region where
the absorption takes place in case of digestive perturbations (coliform germs), or gets down
from nasal-pharynges in the case of some diseases, such as: rhinitis, tonsilitis, otitis etc,
especially if they are caused by streptostaphilococci.
The nitrites that entered the body combine with the haemoglobin (Hb) forming
methemoglobin (MHb), leading to a deficit of oxygen. The seriousness of the disease
(clinical forms) is given by the quantity of bloked haemoglobin (that is the percent of MHb)
(Biro, 1993):
• The superficial form appears between 10 – 25% and is characterized by cyanosis of
face (lips, nose), extremities (nails, finger tips) and mucous membrane
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