Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
Environ Pollut. 2022 Nov 15;313:120091. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2022.120091. Epub 2022 Sep 2.
Human exposure to organic contaminants is widespread. Many of these contaminants show adverse health effects on human population. Human biomonitoring (HBM) follows the levels and the distribution of biomarkers of exposure (BoE), but it is usually done in a targeted manner. Suspect and non-targeted screening (SS/NTS) tend to find BoE in an agnostic way, without preselection of compounds, and include finding evidence of exposure to predicted, unpredicted known and unknown chemicals. This study describes the application of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)-based SS/NTS workflow for revealing organic contaminants in urine of a cohort of 200 children from Slovenia, aged 6-9 years. The children originated from two regions, urban and rural, and the latter were sampled in two time periods, summer and winter. We tentatively identified 74 BoE at the confidence levels of 2 and 3. These BoE belong to several classes of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, plasticizers and plastic related products, volatile organic compounds, nicotine, caffeine and pesticides. The risk of three pesticides, atrazine, amitraz and diazinon is of particular concern since their use was limited in the EU. Among BoE we tentatively identified compounds that have not yet been monitored in HBM schemes and demonstrate limited exposure data, such as bisphenol G, polyethylene glycols and their ethers. Furthermore, 7 compounds with unknown use and sources of exposure were tentatively identified, either indicating the entry of new chemicals into the market, or their metabolites and transformation products. Interestingly, several BoE showed location and time dependency. Globally, this study presents high-throughput approach to SS/NTS for HBM. The results shed a light on the exposure of Slovenian children and raise questions on potential adverse health effects of such mixtures on this vulnerable population.
人体接触有机污染物的情况非常普遍。其中许多污染物对人类健康产生不良影响。人体生物监测（HBM）跟踪暴露生物标志物（BoE）的水平和分布，但通常是有针对性地进行。可疑和非靶向筛选（SS/NTS）倾向于以一种无偏见的方式发现 BoE，无需预先选择化合物，并包括发现接触预测、未预测的已知和未知化学物质的证据。本研究描述了基于高分辨率质谱（HRMS）的 SS/NTS 工作流程在斯洛文尼亚 200 名 6-9 岁儿童尿液中发现有机污染物的应用。这些儿童来自城市和农村两个地区，农村地区在夏季和冬季两个时期进行了采样。我们在置信度为 2 和 3 的水平上暂定鉴定了 74 种 BoE。这些 BoE 属于几类药物、个人护理产品、增塑剂和与塑料有关的产品、挥发性有机化合物、尼古丁、咖啡因和农药。三嗪类除草剂莠去津、咪鲜胺和二嗪磷的使用风险尤其令人关注，因为它们在欧盟的使用受到限制。在 BoE 中，我们暂定鉴定了尚未在 HBM 计划中监测到的化合物，以及暴露数据有限的化合物，如双酚 G、聚乙二醇及其醚。此外，还暂定鉴定了 7 种具有未知用途和暴露源的化合物，这些化合物要么表明新化学物质进入市场，要么表明其代谢物和转化产物。有趣的是，一些 BoE 显示出位置和时间的依赖性。总的来说，本研究为 HBM 提供了一种高通量的 SS/NTS 方法。研究结果揭示了斯洛文尼亚儿童的暴露情况，并对这种混合物对这一弱势群体的潜在不良健康影响提出了疑问。
