National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, 35 Keyan Road, Zhunan, Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan.
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, 138 Sheng-Li Road, Tainan, 704, Taiwan.
Anal Chim Acta. 2022 Apr 1;1200:339610. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2022.339610. Epub 2022 Feb 16.
Phthalate esters are a group of synthetic industrial chemicals that are widely used in plastics. Urinary phthalate metabolites are short-term exposure markers frequently used to represent exposure levels in environmental epidemiology studies. Human hair is an alternative matrix for recording long-term exposure, but there are still analytical challenges that need to be addressed. In this study, an analytical method was established for simultaneously measuring nine major phthalate metabolites in human hair and successfully applied to measure phthalate metabolites in 30 hair samples collected from 30 individual human volunteers without known occupational exposure to phthalates. Two portions of 25 mg of hair samples were extracted by acidified methanol and water in 240 min of ultrasonication and then analyzed using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry system. The limit of quantification ranged from 0.72 to 10.7 ng/g hair for nine phthalate metabolites. All nine phthalate metabolites were detected in more than 70% of the 30 individual human hair samples. The measured levels of hair phthalate metabolites were (in descending order): MEHP > MMP ≫ MEP > MBP (MnBP + MiBP) > MiNP > MEHHP ≈ MEOHP ≈ MECPP. The primary metabolite, MEHP (692 ± 582 ng/g), is the major DEHP metabolite in hair. This result is consistent with the findings in blood but not in urine, in which the secondary metabolites are the major DEHP metabolites. This method is easy to foresee with a clinical application and applies to human biomonitoring studies to assess long-term environmental phthalate exposure.
邻苯二甲酸酯是一组广泛应用于塑料的合成工业化学品。尿邻苯二甲酸代谢物是环境流行病学研究中常用的短期暴露标志物，用于代表暴露水平。人类头发是记录长期暴露的替代基质，但仍存在需要解决的分析挑战。在这项研究中，建立了一种同时测定人发中 9 种主要邻苯二甲酸代谢物的分析方法，并成功应用于测定 30 名无已知职业性邻苯二甲酸酯暴露的个体志愿者的 30 个人发样本中的邻苯二甲酸代谢物。通过酸化甲醇和水，在 240 分钟的超声处理下，从 25 毫克头发样本中提取两部分，然后使用液相色谱-串联质谱系统进行分析。9 种邻苯二甲酸代谢物的定量限范围为 0.72 至 10.7ng/g 头发。30 个人发样本中超过 70%的样本检测到 9 种邻苯二甲酸代谢物。所测发中邻苯二甲酸代谢物水平（降序排列）为：MEHP＞MMP≫MEP＞MBP（MnBP+MiBP）＞MiNP＞MEHHP≈MEOHP≈MECPP。主要代谢物 MEHP（692±582ng/g）是头发中二酯邻苯二甲酸酯的主要代谢物。这一结果与血液中的发现一致，但与尿液中的发现不一致，尿液中的次级代谢物是二酯邻苯二甲酸酯的主要代谢物。该方法易于临床应用，适用于评估长期环境邻苯二甲酸酯暴露的人体生物监测研究。
