Complex chemical mixtures: Approaches for assessing adverse human health effects

Mustafa, Emienour Muzalina; Valente, Maria João; Vinggaard, Anne Marie

doi:10.1016/j.cotox.2023.100404

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Thus, considering the potential combined effect of micropollutants is necessary when it comes to the assessment of their environmental effects. 39 The maximum concentration of micropollutants and their detection frequencies across the sites are displayed in Figure 2. Some micropollutants occur frequently (e.g., terbuthylazine-TP MT23 (LM5) and TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinol) with detection frequencies of 70 and 89%, respectively), while others occur at a few sites with some elevated concentrations (e.g., propachlor ESA at a maximum concentration of 8 μg/L).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Explorative Quantitative Nontarget Analysis Reveals Micropollutants in Danish Groundwater

Nanusha,

Frøkjær,

Rüsz Hansen

et al. 2023

ACS EST Water

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, it is worth noting that adverse effects of mixtures of different micropollutants at environmentally relevant concentrations may be higher than those of individual compounds. Thus, considering the potential combined effect of micropollutants is necessary when it comes to the assessment of their environmental effects …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explorative Quantitative Nontarget Analysis Reveals Micropollutants in Danish Groundwater

Nanusha,

Frøkjær,

Rüsz Hansen

et al. 2023

ACS EST Water

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“…Numerous chemicals that are nutrients for living organisms are released in excrement and urine into sewers without being altered. However, in addition to untreated and treated effluent wastewater from treatment plants, high concentrations of such chemicals are potentially observable in drinking water and in surface and underground waters [1]. One of the primary sources of water pollution is uncontrolled wastewater released from various industries into water masses and other environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Battery of Simple Bioassays for Domestic and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plants in Konya, Turkey

Tongur,

Atmaca

2023

Sustainability

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Wastewater ingredients present risks to the environment and can cause health problems. The aim of this study was to identify the toxicological effects of influent and effluent wastewater from Konya Urban Wastewater Treatment Plant (KU WWTP) and Konya Organized Industrial Zone Wastewater Treatment Plant (KOI WWTP). Three different trophic level toxicity tests were conducted to determine the possible harmful effects of wastewater on the environment. The base toxic unit values of the Lepidium sativum toxicity test for the inlet and outlet samples of KU WWTP were found to be 1.43 and 1.10, respectively. Both values classified the analyzed wastewater into the “toxic” category. Wastewater entering the KU wastewater treatment facility was classified as “toxic” for the presence of toxic substances according to the Vibrio fischeri toxicity testing. Influent samples from the KOI wastewater treatment plant were classified as “toxic” with the Vibrio fischeri toxicity test. In addition, based on the fish bioassay value (TDF), wastewater from the KOI treatment facility was also classified as “toxic”. It was concluded that increased chemical oxygen demand and concentrations of total nitrogen and phosphorus and of certain heavy metals above the limits played a decisive role in classifying the samples as “toxic”. The results of this study suggest that all three tests have the potential to assess wastewater toxicity and that changes in wastewater properties may result in differences in test sensitivity.

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“…In the context of legislative settings, the European Regulation REACH is considering the application of generic factors (Mustafa et al, 2023). For instance, the Mixture Allocation Factor (MAF) of 5 is proposed by ECHA to account for potential mixture risks for chemicals produced above a certain tonnage limit.…”

Section: Mixture Risk Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This generic factor assumes higher and more widespread exposure, resulting in a potentially higher risk for the entire population, although it lacks datadriven, evidence-based specificity. An alternative could be the use of a data-driven mixture 201 General Discussion • Chapter 7 Chapter 7 driver factor (MDF) for each chemical class/family separately, within which chemicals that are the main driver of the mixture effect for a specific adverse effect are assigned with an additional factor (Mustafa et al, 2023). It should be noted that the use of generic factors like MAF or MDF may be overly conservative, as not all compounds exhibit commonalities in mode of action or adverse outcome pathways, and may have different co-occurring exposure patterns.…”

Section: Mixture Risk Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to identify exposure to real-life chemical mixtures in the general population

Ottenbros

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Humans are exposed to large number of chemicals from various sources in their environment. Current risk assessment approaches often focus on single chemicals, sources or routes, not accounting for possible combinations of chemicals and overlooking potential additional risks associated with chemical mixtures. This thesis focusses on how to accurately measure and describe exposure patterns of chemical mixtures in the general population. Measuring exposure to chemical mixtures in real-life situations at a population level is a complex task. The preferably individual measurements can be obtained either externally (e.g. silicone wristbands) or internally (human biomonitoring). In my thesis, chemical mixtures are described as combinations of manufactured chemicals that co-occur within the same individual or sample. My thesis revolves around three different approaches to identify chemical mixtures in the general population. 1) The first approach focusses on describing co-occurrence patterns of chemicals in existing human biomonitoring datasets, combining a graphical correlation network model with a clustering algorithm. This method visualizes and summarizes these co-occurrence patterns by identifying highly correlated groups or clusters of chemicals. We demonstrated that presenting biomonitoring data in networks facilitates the identification of exposure patterns that contribute to the observed exposure levels in the samples. The application of community detection with a clustering algorithm was instrumental in identifying patterns within and between chemical families. 2) The second approach involves measuring chemical mixtures at individual level, employing external and internal measurements. 3) The third approach refers to the analytical measurement of chemical mixtures in urine samples, for which a suspect screening approach based on high resolution mass spectrometry was applied, enabling detection of a broad range of biomarkers in a single sample. The second and third approach were applied on pesticides, as an example of a mixture of chemicals. By utilization of wristbands we were able to detect multiple pesticides over a longer period of time, reflecting highly individual exposure profiles. It was demonstrated that a harmonized pan-European sample collection, combined with suspect screening provided valuable new insights into the presence of pesticide mixture exposure in the European population. Forty pesticide biomarkers corresponding to 29 different pesticides were confidently identified across six countries. Some variation but no consistent pattern in the probability of detection of pesticide biomarkers was observed based on residential location or season of urine sampling. Pesticide mixture patterns in the adult populations of the Netherlands and Switzerland were analyzed by their semi-quantitative levels. Urinary concentrations of the two most frequently detected pesticides (acetamiprid and chlorpropham) showed an inverse association with high organic vegetable and fruit consumption. In both countries, detection rates and co-occurrence of pesticides in the same urine sample were typically low. This thesis highlights the importance of understanding and measuring the mixture of chemicals we encounter. Knowledge of what these mixtures are helps us to figure out the risks to human health. I recommend to incorporate the approaches of this thesis in future studies to learn more about human exposure to chemical mixtures, and that research and sharing data is conducted in a harmonized way.

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Complex chemical mixtures: Approaches for assessing adverse human health effects

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

Explorative Quantitative Nontarget Analysis Reveals Micropollutants in Danish Groundwater

Explorative Quantitative Nontarget Analysis Reveals Micropollutants in Danish Groundwater

A Battery of Simple Bioassays for Domestic and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plants in Konya, Turkey

Approaches to identify exposure to real-life chemical mixtures in the general population

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