Schools of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China.
South China Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Guangzhou 510655, China.
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2018 Aug 15;157:380-387. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.03.095. Epub 2018 Apr 7.
Air pollution worldwide, especially in China and India, has caused serious health issues. Because PM particles consist of solid particles of diverse properties with payloads of inorganic, organic and biological pollutants, it is still not known what the major toxic components are and how these components induce toxicities. To explore this complex issue, we apply reductionism principle and an ultrafine particle library approach in this work. From investigation of 63 diversely functionalized ultrafine particles (FUPs) with adsorbed key pollutants, our findings indicate that 1) only certain pollutants in the payloads of PM are responsible for causing cellular oxidative stress, cell apoptosis, and cytotoxicity while the particle carriers are much less toxic; 2) pollutant-induced cellular oxidative stress and oxidative stress-triggered apoptosis are identified as one of the dominant mechanisms for PM-induced cytotoxicity; 3) each specific toxic component on PM (such as As, Pb, Cr or BaP) mainly affects its specific target organ(s) and, adding together, these pollutants may cause synergistic or just additive effects. Our findings demonstrate that reductionism concept and model PM particle library approach are very effective in our endeavor to search for a better understanding of PM-induced health effects.
全球范围内的空气污染，特别是在中国和印度，已导致严重的健康问题。由于 PM 颗粒由具有无机、有机和生物污染物的负载的各种特性的固体颗粒组成，因此仍不清楚主要的有毒成分是什么，以及这些成分如何引起毒性。为了探索这一复杂问题，我们在这项工作中应用了还原论原则和超细颗粒文库方法。通过对 63 种具有不同功能的超细颗粒（FUP）和吸附关键污染物的调查，我们的研究结果表明：1）只有 PM 载体内的某些污染物对细胞氧化应激、细胞凋亡和细胞毒性负责，而颗粒载体的毒性要小得多；2）确定了污染物诱导的细胞氧化应激和氧化应激引发的细胞凋亡是 PM 诱导细胞毒性的主要机制之一；3）PM 上的每个特定有毒成分（如 As、Pb、Cr 或 BaP）主要影响其特定的靶器官，而这些污染物加在一起可能会产生协同或相加的作用。我们的研究结果表明，还原论概念和模型 PM 颗粒文库方法在我们努力寻找更好地理解 PM 诱导的健康影响方面非常有效。
