Toxicology of white oils

Citation

(1999), "Toxicology of white oils", Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, Vol. 51 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilt.1999.01851aaa.001

Toxicology of white oils

Toxicology of white oils

Keywords Oils, Toxicology, White oils

It is an unfortunate but wholly understandable fact that less is known about the nutritional aspects of humans than of most other animals. The diets of pigs, poultry and other livestock are dependent on formulated animal feedstuffs which are optimised by compounders with mathematical precision, as are pet foods. New theories concerning human diet, however, seem to emerge almost on a monthly basis. Of course, human nutrition can be a good deal more complex and there is not the opportunity to observe cause and effect when evaluating potentially harmful materials. We have been confronted with this latter problem when considering the use of white mineral oil, also other ingredients, when used in food-contact lubricants associated with food machinery applications. Although the subject of mineral oils in the human diet has been the subject of much recent and some ongoing investigation, in reality we have been ingesting significant quantities of mineral oils for many years, and from a variety of sources. Although no proper epidemiological studies have been undertaken, the complete historical absence of any known ill effects on humans arising from ingestion of mineral hydrocarbon appears now to have been disregarded on the basis of a series of test results involving one particular strain of laboratory rat according to various reports. This strain of rat has already been shown to exhibit a certain predisposition to the type of physiological symptoms exhibited by those fed on diets containing mineral oil, in that a substantial proportion of the test animals used as control blanks, i.e. normal diet without added hydrocarbon, showed evidence of the same physiological effects. Also, in a number of the studies, the design of the feeding trial programme was suspect. Ideally, only one parameter should be changed at a time so that any subsequent effects can be linked to a single cause. In most of the feeding trial experiments which have taken place, a number of parameters are often changed at a time, such as the type of mineral oil source, the viscosity, the manufacturing route, the strain of animal used, etc., which negates a clear cause and effect correlation. This is not to suggest that human ingestion of mineral oil is not without some degree of possible health risk, but the evidence does seem to indicate that humans are far more tolerant of mineral oil hydrocarbons than the particular strain of rat (F/344) used in many of the trials.