Netherlands, starvation

Starvation or disease can lead to rapid release of the stored xenobiotic and to delayed toxic effects. In one well-documented case in the Netherlands (see Chapter 5), wild female eider ducks (Somateria mollissima) experienced delayed neurotoxicity caused by dieldrin. The ducks had laid down large reserves of depot fat before breeding, and these reserves were run down during the course of egg laying. Dieldrin concentrations quickly rose to lethal levels in the brain. Male eider ducks did not lay down and mobilize body fat in this way and did not show delayed neurotoxicity due to dieldrin. 

Van Der Molen EJ, Blok AA, Graaf GJ. 1982. Winter starvation and mercury intoxication in Gray Herons (Ardea cinerea) in the Netherlands. Ardea 70 173-184. 

Very few scientihc studies have been carried out on humans during prolonged starvation. One of the first concerned a single individual and later studies confirmed that the responses observed in this classical experiment were not atypical. Tragically, the Second World War provided the opportunity to study the effects of starvation on much larger populations, for example in the Western Netherlands, the Warsaw Ghetto and German and Japanese... 

A detailed study of the problems caused by starvation, the response to ref ceding and the best methods for refeeding was carried out by an international team of medical and nutritional experts whose Hndings were published in 1948 by The Netherlands Government (Burger et al., 1948). 

Once all the fat has been nsed, the rate of degradation of protein, now the only fnel, mnst increase considerably. The exact canse of death in snch circnmstances is not always clear a stndy of starvation in the Western Netherlands in 1944 5 (see Box 16.1) raised a number of possibilities ... 

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