Perfluorinated compounds in maternal serum and cord blood from selected areas of South Africa: results of a pilot study

Abstract

There is limited information about both environmental and human perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) concentrations in the southern hemisphere, and for the first time, concentrations of these compounds are reported in maternal serum and cord blood of South African women. The majority of the participants were of African Black ethnicity, with a similar socioeconomic status. In maternal serum perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was found to be the most abundant PFC (1.6 ng mL ) and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS: 0.5 ng mL À1 ); however, in cord blood PFOA was the most abundant compound (1.3 ng mL À1) followed by PFOS (0.7 ng mL À1) and PFHxS (0.3 ng mL À1). Linear PFOS constituted 58% of the sum of PFOS, comparable with a reported percentage from Australia. Differences in PFC concentrations between communities were found, with the highest concentrations in urban and semi-urban areas. The median maternal PFOS concentration was lower than has been reported in other studies, whereas the PFOA concentration was the same. This clearly indicates that the exposure pathway is different from the western world. Significant differences in housing quality were observed and the urban and sub-urban community had the highest living and housing standards. Possible exposure pathways could be different from those elucidated in the western world with the exception of the urban community in our study that showed higher living standards in general and easier access to modern consumer products.

Determinants of maternal and fetal exposure and temporal trends of perfluorinated compounds

“…In the present study, we found higher levels of PFCs in maternal serum than in cord serum, which is consistent with previous studies (Monroy et al 2008;Hanssen et al 2010;Beesoon et al 2011). Maternal and cord PFOS and PFOA concentrations were among the highest in Europe (Midasch et al 2007;Fei et al 2007;Needham et al 2011) and even among the highest in the world (Liu et al 2011;Kim et al 2011a, b;Beesoon et al 2011).…”

Effects of age, gender and region on serum concentrations of perfluorinated compounds in general population of Henan, China

“…Biomonitoring data showed 4-8 fold higher PFCs concentrations in blood plasma of population exposed to PFCs contaminated drinking water compared with controls (Holzer et al, 2008). These can also explain why the concentrations of PFOS and PFOA in this study were much lower than concentrations from developed countries like USA (Nelson et al, 2010), Japan (Harada et al, 2010) and Germany (Fromme et al, 2009), only higher than those reported for South Africa (Hanssen et al, 2010) and Peru (Calafat et al, 2006b).…”

Temporal trends of perfluorooctanesulfonate isomer and enantiomer patterns in archived Swedish and American serum samples

“…According to our hypothesis, the significantly lower %br-PFOS in American females could be a result of relatively lower PreFOS exposure compared to males. However, it might also be explained by isomer-selective placental transfer during pregnancy, which favors branched PFOS isomers and results in reduced %br-PFOS in maternal serum (Beesoon et al, 2011;Hanssen et al, 2010). Scarce isomer specific studies exist on menstrual and lactation elimination of PFOS, however, the significantly higher %br-PFOS in the husbands than their wives, none of which have had a baby (Zhang et al, 2014), may point to a preferential branched PFOS elimination in females.…”

“…In rats, there was no evidence for enantioselective urinary elimination or tissue distribution (Wang et al, 2011b), but species differences could exist. The observed age and sex differences could possibly explained by enantioselective elimination through menstrual bleeding (Knox et al, 2011), placental transfer (Beesoon et al, 2011;Hanssen et al, 2010) and lactation Karrman et al, 2007) in young women, but enantioselective studies of these processes have not been done for PFOS, thus it is acknowledged that there remains some uncertainty in interpreting 1m-PFOS EF data.…”