School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Environ Toxicol Chem. 2013 Oct;32(10):2226-33. doi: 10.1002/etc.2306.
Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) are a group of compounds with varying carbon chains and functional groups. Currently, available toxicity studies of PFCs are limited mainly to dominant species. While many other PFCs are detected in the environment and biota, it is important to extend toxicity studies to different types of PFCs to better assess their environmental and ecological impacts. In the present study, the environmental toxicity of perfluorooctanesulfonate, perfluoroocanoic acid, perfluorononanoic acid, and perfluorodecanoic acid were evaluated in green mussel, Perna viridis, using a new and improved integrated biomarker approach, the enhanced integrated biomarker response (EIBR) system, with biomarkers from multiple biological levels. Structure-activity relationships were also examined based on the biomarker results. The results show that the 4 PFCs have distinct toxicity patterns and the integrative toxicity, in terms of the EIBR value, is governed by the fluorinated chain length. In addition to commonly recognized chain length and functional group effects, several structural factors are also involved in the toxic actions of PFCs, including hydrophobicity and molecular size, and so on. By integrating biomarkers from multiple biological levels with weight-of-evidence, the proposed EIBR provides a new perspective and an ecologically relevant assessment of the environmental toxicity of the pollutants. The results of EIBR and structure-activity analysis are also useful to predict toxic behaviors of other PFCs in the group and facilitate the decision-making process.
全氟化合物（PFCs）是一组具有不同碳链和官能团的化合物。目前，对 PFCs 的毒性研究主要限于主要物种。虽然许多其他 PFCs 在环境和生物群中被检测到，但将毒性研究扩展到不同类型的 PFCs 以更好地评估它们的环境和生态影响非常重要。在本研究中，使用新的和改进的综合生物标志物方法——增强的综合生物标志物反应（EIBR）系统，对贻贝（Perna viridis）中的全氟辛烷磺酸、全氟辛酸、全氟壬酸和全氟癸酸的环境毒性进行了评估，该系统结合了来自多个生物水平的生物标志物。还根据生物标志物结果检查了结构-活性关系。结果表明，这 4 种 PFCs 具有不同的毒性模式，并且根据 EIBR 值，整合毒性受氟化链长的控制。除了公认的链长和官能团效应外，几种结构因素也参与了 PFCs 的毒性作用，包括疏水性和分子大小等。通过将来自多个生物水平的生物标志物与证据权重相结合，所提出的 EIBR 为污染物的环境毒性提供了新的视角和生态相关性评估。EIBR 和结构-活性分析的结果也有助于预测该组中其他 PFC 的毒性行为，并有助于决策过程。
