OFI, Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology, Vienna, Austria.
Risk Assessment Department, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES), Maisons-Alfort, France.
PLoS One. 2020 Apr 3;15(4):e0231171. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231171. eCollection 2020.
Plastic toys mouthed by children may be a source of exposure to endocrine active substances. The purpose of this study was to measure hormonal activity of substances leaching from toys and to identify potential endocrine disruptors causing that activity. For this purpose, migration experiments of toys were conducted in saliva simulants. The CALUX® assays were used to detect (anti-) estrogenic and (anti-) androgenic activity of 18 toys. Chemical trace analysis-namely, GC-MS and HPLC-MS- was used to identify which compounds may be responsible for endocrine activity in the sample migrates. Nine out of 18 tested toys showed significant estrogenic activity. For two samples, the detected estrogenic activity could be well explained by detecting the known endocrine active substance bisphenol A (BPA). For all identified substances, including BPA, a risk assessment for human health was performed by comparing the exposure dose, calculated based on the determined substance concentration, to toxicological reference values. Using worst-case scenarios, the exposure to BPA by mouthing of the two estrogen active, BPA-containing toys could be above the temporary TDI that EFSA has calculated. This demonstrates that some toys could significantly contribute to the total exposure to BPA of babies and infants. For seven out of nine estrogen active samples, the source of the estrogen activity could not be explained by analysis for 41 known or suspected endocrine active substances in plastic, indicating that the estrogen activities were caused by currently unknown endocrine active substances, or by endocrine active substances that would currently not be suspected in toys.
儿童口中的塑料玩具可能是接触内分泌活性物质的来源。本研究的目的是测量从玩具中浸出的物质的激素活性，并确定导致这种活性的潜在内分泌干扰物。为此，在唾液模拟物中进行了玩具迁移实验。使用 CALUX®测定法检测了 18 种玩具的（抗）雌激素和（抗）雄激素活性。化学痕量分析-即 GC-MS 和 HPLC-MS-用于鉴定可能导致样品迁移中内分泌活性的化合物。18 种测试的玩具中有 9 种显示出显著的雌激素活性。对于两个样本，检测到的雌激素活性可以通过检测已知的内分泌活性物质双酚 A（BPA）得到很好的解释。对于所有鉴定出的物质，包括 BPA，通过比较基于确定的物质浓度计算的暴露剂量与毒理学参考值，对其进行了人类健康风险评估。使用最坏情况情景，通过咀嚼两种含有 BPA 的具有雌激素活性的玩具，儿童接触 BPA 的量可能超过 EFSA 计算的临时 TDI。这表明，一些玩具可能会显著增加婴儿和幼儿接触 BPA 的总量。对于 9 种具有雌激素活性的样本中的 7 种，通过对塑料中 41 种已知或疑似内分泌活性物质的分析，无法解释雌激素活性的来源，这表明雌激素活性是由目前未知的内分泌活性物质引起的，或者是由目前在玩具中不会被怀疑的内分泌活性物质引起的。
