Children in Africa and parts of Asia are victims of toxins "invisible" in the epidemic-fungal foods that can retard growth and delay their development, according to a new report by the international Agency for cancer research and funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The two main toxins-aflatoxin and fumonisin-are present in dangerously high levels in peanuts, cassava and corn, which constitute the bulk of the Benin child feeding in Kenya.
The toxins have long been known to cause liver cancer and, in high enough concentrations, death. But this is the first time they have been shown by many studies to contribute significantly to growth retardation in children.
"There is a huge problem" largely unknown in developed countries, said J. David Miller, a fungal toxicologist at Carleton University in Ottawa and one of the authors of the report. "Huge amounts of money are spent [in the United States and Western Europe] to prevent you from being exposed to these types of toxins."
The toxins, byproducts of Aspergillus and Fusarium fungi are endemic in corn fields worldwide. The difference is that US and European producers are doing everything possible to remove contaminants to meet strict standards for human consumption, 20 parts per billion (ppb) in the United States and only 2 ppb in Europe. The fields are highly processed, and crops are treated so that any remaining toxins are leached. Foods that do not conform to standards used as animal feed or burned. In total, American food producers spend between $ 500 million and annual management of fungal toxins than $ 1.5 billion.
But in countries where food shortages are chronic, some farmers have the ability to process their crops and enforcement is lax. Premium products are sold for export. "It makes me cry when I'm in Nampula, Mozambique, and women are there on the floor, sorting grain by hand, trying to get the best whole grain and then send to Europe" said Peter J. Cotty, a plant pathologist with the US Department of agriculture agricultural Research Service in Tucson, Arizona. "And he gets rejected by Europe. But there are in the European market for bird feed, which allows 50 [ppb] that person in a developed country would never allow people to eat. "
People back home are stuck with food at even higher levels of toxicity sometimes in the thousands of ppb.
the rate of stunting among children under 5 are as low as 2.1% in the USA and as high as 59.3% in Afghanistan, according to the latest data from the World health Organization. the World health Organization data 
researchers are not sure exactly how toxins affect children, but the new report brings together six recent studies that show that children with high levels of biomarkers of the toxin in the blood are shorter and weigh less than other children their age. They also grow at a slower rate than their peers. Preliminary studies suggest the effects may have something to do with the activation of the immune system and how the body absorbs nutrients.
The report also makes recommendations to control the problem, including the treatment of fields with natural biocontrol, improving food storage conditions and the diversification of supply. It also calls for the development of rapid screening methods that would be able to quickly detect toxins in the blood.
Miller said the problem is as much social scientist. "It just seems to be intractable for a variety of reasons," he said. "If you look in the literature, it was 50 years ago, people in public policy said more or less exactly what we say now. And here we are."
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