a b s t r a c tThe occurrence of estrogens in the aquatic environment attracts increasingly attention because of their strong endocrine disrupting potency. In present work, concentrations of six estrogens including diethylstilbestrol (DES), estrone (E1), b-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), 17a-ethynylestradiol (EE2) and b-estradiol 17-valerate (EV) in surface water and sediment sampled from three rivers in Tianjin area, northern China were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The concentrations of the total six estrogens ( P 6ES) ranged from 0.64 to 174 ng L À1 in waters and from 0.98 to 51.6 ng g À1 dry weight(dw) in sediments, and varied for each river. Among these estrogens, E1 was the most abundant and could be detected in all samples. DES and EV could be detected either in river water or in sediment, but in the concentration range below 10 ng L À1 and 10 ng g À1 for water and sediment, respectively.The relationships between concentration of estrogens and organic carbon content in sediments and the relationships between sediment-water partition coefficient (log K oc ) and octanol-water partition coefficient (log K ow ) were examined. The results showed that the contents of the P 6ES correlated significantly with the contents of organic carbon (OC%). It indicated that sediments with high organic carbon were more likely to retain estrogens than those with lower organic carbon levels in the natural aquatic environment. Furthermore, the linear correlations between log K ow and log K oc were obtained for each river, which indicated that sediment-water partitioning of estrogens in three rivers could be predicted by their hydrophobic properties.

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Concentration levels of six natural and anthropogenic origin steroid estrogens, namely, diethylstilbestrol (DES), estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), ethinylestradiol (EE2), and estradiol-17-valerate (Ev), from different effluents in Beijing were assessed. Sampling sites include two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), a chemical plant, a hospital, a pharmaceutical factory, a hennery, and a fish pool. In general, concentrations of estrogens in the effluents varied from no detection (nd) to 11.1 ng/l, 0.7 to 1.2 × 10 3 ng/l, nd to 67.4 ng/l, nd to 4.1 × 10 3 ng/l, nd to 1.2 × 10 3 ng/l, and nd to 11.2 ng/l for DES, E1, E2, EE2, E3, and Ev, respectively. The concentration levels of steroid estrogens from different effluents decreased in the order of pharmaceutical factory and WWTP inlets > hospital > hennery > chemical factory > fish pool. This study indicated that natural estrogens E1, E2, and E3 and synthetic estrogen EE2 are the dominant steroid estrogens found in the different Beijing effluents. For source identification, an indicator (hE = E3/(E1 + E2 + E3)) was used to trace human estrogen excretion. Accordingly, hE in effluents from the hospital and WWTP inlets exceeded 0.4, while much smaller values were obtained for the other effluents. Human excretions were the major contributor of natural estrogens in municipal wastewater. Estimation results demonstrated that direct discharge was the major contributor of steroid estrogen pollution in receiving waters.

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The potentially adverse health implications of bisphenol A (BPA) have led to increasing use of alternative bisphenols (BPs). However, little is known about the toxicity of alternative BPs. In this study, the cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, intracellular ROS formation, and Ca fluctuation effects of BPs on MCF-7 cells were evaluated. At the same time, the estrogenic and thyroidal hormone effect potentials of six BPs were also evaluated using two-hybrid yeast bioassay. The results showed that most BPs at 0.01-1 μM significantly increased cell viability in MCF-7 cells and at higher exposure concentrations of 25-100 μM, they caused a significant decrease of cell viability. At the same time, these BPs also at 25-100 μM significantly increased LDH release of MCF-7 cells. In addition, several BPs at 10-50 μM resulted in a significantly concentration-depended increase in DNA-damaging effect on MCF-7 cells and elevated ROS production. Most BPs at 0.0001-10 μM significantly increased intracellular Ca level. These results showed that bisphenol AF (BPAF) and thiodiphenol (TDP) exerted cell biological effect, estrogenic, and thyroidal effect potentials greater than those of BPA. The cytotoxicity and endocrine disrupting effects of other BPs are similar to or slightly lower than those of BPA. Therefore, as potential alternatives to BPA, endocrine disrupting effects and potential health harm of alternative BPs to human can also not be ignored. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 32: 278-289, 2017.