[Comparative studies of food product contamination with carcinogenic aromatic polycyclic hydrocarbons (APH) in the USSR and the GDR (defining the problem)].

The article is the first in a series of joint publications relating to work carried out in the USSR and GDR in studying possible carcinogenicity of alimentary products and pertinent preventive measures to exclude it. It contains brief information on the effect produced by carcinogenic additives in nutritional products upon the cancer involving the gastro-intestinal tract (in workers of meat packing plants and smokehouses). Under discussion is the relation between the disease-incidence and nutritional specificity. Major sources of possible carcinogenicity of alimentary products, such as additions of some dyestuffs, admixtures of some natural substances (cycsdine, thiourea, etc), contaminations of biological origin, with mycotoxins, carcinogens finding their way from the environment and, what is most important caused by specific technology of manufacturing the nutritional product (smoking, direct drying, frying, etc) are considered. The significance of carcinogenic PAH and benzpyrene, nitrose-amines and mycotoxins is discussed. The possibility and the need for determining carcinogenic compounds, of PAH above all, and their technical limitations in alimentary products with a view of preventing cancer of the gastro-intestinal tract are considered.