Distribution of 31 endocrine disrupting compounds in the Taihu Lake and application of the fish plasma model

Abstract

Background: The successful application of Fish plasma model (FPM) will greatly simplify the risk assessment of drugs. At present, the FPM has been applied to the risk assessment of several human drugs with high hydrophobicity. However, its applicability to a wide variety of compounds needs to be tested. Filed work about distribution characteristics of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in water and in fish plasma plays a key role in promoting the successful application of FPM. However, there are few reports on the distribution of EDCs in fish, especially in wild fish plasma. Results: The distribution of 31 EDCs, including seven estrogens, eight androgens, six progesterones, five glucocorticoids and five industrial compounds, in water and in plasma of five categories of wild fishes in Taihu Lake was studied and the typical FPM was tested by the field data. The detected concentration of most compounds is relatively low (< 10 ng/L), and the industrial compounds are the predominant pollutants with the highest concentration up to 291.7 ng/L (Bisphenol A) in water. In general, glucocorticoids were detected at highest concentrations in plasma of all kinds of fishes, followed by industrial compounds and estrogens. Except for glucocorticoids (up to 43.61 for Cortisone), the average concentrations of other four categories of EDCs in fish plasma were generally low (< 10 μ g / L). The available measured bioaccumulation factors (BAFs) of 20 kinds of EDCs were in the range of 0 to 5626. The bioaccumulation of EDCs in fish plasma is not only hydrophobicity dependent, and it is both fish species-specific and compound-dependent. The classical FPM was tested and the results indicated that the good coincide of measured logBAFs and the theoretical logBCFs was only observed for limited EDCs (7 out of 20). The present available FPM generally underestimated the LogBAFs of most hydrophilic EDCs (logKow <3.87, 11 out of 20) whereas overestimated the LogBAFs of several high hydrophobic EDCs (LogKow >3.87) in fish plasma. Conclusion：Although the present FPM is barely satisfactory, it is still promising for predicating the accumulation of EDCs in fish plasma and for further environmental risk assessment.

Simultaneous determination of 31 endocrine disrupting chemicals in fish plasma by solid‐phase extraction coupled with ultra‐performance liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry

“…There were 18 of 31 EDCs with absolute recoveries ranging from 50% to 150%. The data obtained did not differ significantly from the results of our previous studies [25]. We found strong matrix effects of fish plasmas for most EDCs, which may result in a low recovery rate.…”

“…Considering the research basis for the analysis of existing SPE biological samples and the case of matrix effects, we determined the following three SPE methods, with specific differences as follows: (The specific reasons for proposing these methods are discussed in Section 3.1). Method 1 only uses MCX cartridges for SPE, and the procedures were performed according to our previous work [25,26]. Briefly, 6 ml of methanol and 6 ml of formic acid solution (pH = 3.0) were used to condition the MCX cartridges sequentially before the SPE.…”

“…Based on our previously published studies [25,27] was used as the solvent removal gas, and the flow rate was 550 L/h. In terms of chromatography, this study chose BEH C18 columns (150 × 2.1 mm i.d., 1.7 μm; Waters) to separate the compound.…”

“…It is obvious that BPS is subject to a matrix effect of fish plasma, which exhibits a significant amplification phenomenon in Method 1. Due to the good retention capacity for alkaline compounds, the MCX cartridge has been shown to be well-suited for the extraction of EDCs [25]. To mitigate or eliminate the matrix effects, this study aims to find a better SPE pretreatment method to maximize the removal of residual fat or protein from fish plasma.…”

“…UPLC-MS/MS has become one of the main popular analytical methods for EDC detection [22,25], but due to the varied properties of EDCs, multiclass and high-throughput detection methods in biological samples still need to be developed. In our group, the analysis methods for 31 EDCs (including seven androgens, five glucocorticoids, six progesterones, seven estrogens, and five industrial compounds) in water [31,32] and fish samples [25] were established by mixed cation exchange (MCX) cartridgebased SPE combined with HPLC-MS/MS. However, due to the strong matrix effects of fish plasma, the sample cleanup method of 31 EDCs in fish plasma still needs to be optimized.…”