Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State Key Joint Laboratory, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
J Hazard Mater. 2016 Feb 13;303:131-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2015.10.024. Epub 2015 Oct 22.
Lipopolysaccharide (LPS, also called endotoxin) is a pro-inflammatory constituent of gram negative bacteria and cyanobacteria, which causes a potential health risk in the process of routine urban application of reclaimed water, such as car wash, irrigation, scenic water refilling, etc. Previous studies indicated that the common disinfection treatment, chlorination, has little effect on endotoxin activity removal measured by Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) assay. However, in this study, significant decrease of acute inflammatory effects was observed in mouse lung, while LAL assay still presented a moderate increase of endotoxin activity. To explore the possible mechanisms, the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) results showed the chlorination happened in alkyl chain of LPS molecules, which could affect the interaction between LPS and LPS-binding protein. Also the size of LPS aggregates was found to drop significantly after treatment, which could be another results of chlorination caused polarity change. In conclusion, our observation demonstrated that chlorination is effective to reduce the LPS induced inflammation in lung, and it is recommended to use health effect-based methods to assess risk removal of water treatment technologies.
脂多糖（LPS，也称为内毒素）是革兰氏阴性细菌和蓝藻的促炎成分，在城市再生水的常规应用过程中，如洗车、灌溉、景观水补给等，会对健康造成潜在风险。先前的研究表明，常用的消毒处理方法——氯化作用，对鲎变形细胞溶解物（LAL）测定法测量的内毒素活性去除几乎没有影响。然而，在这项研究中，在小鼠肺部观察到急性炎症的影响显著降低，而 LAL 测定法仍显示内毒素活性适度增加。为了探索可能的机制，核磁共振（NMR）结果表明氯化作用发生在 LPS 分子的烷基链上，这可能会影响 LPS 与 LPS 结合蛋白之间的相互作用。此外，处理后 LPS 聚集体的大小明显下降，这可能是氯化作用引起极性变化的另一个结果。总之，我们的观察表明氯化作用可有效降低肺部 LPS 引起的炎症，建议使用基于健康效应的方法来评估水处理技术的风险去除效果。
