The endocrine disrupting potential of sediments from the Upper Danube River (Germany) as revealed by in vitro bioassays and chemical analysis

Abstract

Of the nine sediment extracts tested five extracts exhibited significant estrogenic activities in the YES, which suggested the presence of ER agonists in these samples. The xenoestrogens nonylphenol (NP) and bisphenol A (BPA) and the natural estrogen estrone (E1) were detected while concentrations of 17β-estradiol (E2) and ethinylestradiol (EE2) were less than their respective limits of quantification in all sediment extracts. A comparison of the measured YES-EEQs and the calculated Chem-EEQs revealed that as much as 6% of estrogenic activity in extracts of most sediments could be explained by two xeno- and one natural estrogen. Exposure of H295R cells to sediment extracts from four different locations in the Danube River resulted in significantly increased concentrations of E2, but only slight inhibition of T synthesis. Furthermore, application of the H295R Steroidogenesis Assay provided evidence for endocrine disrupting potencies in sediment samples from the Upper Danube River, some of which were not detectable with the YES. In conclusion, differential endocrine activities were associated with several sediments from the Upper Danube River. Further investigations will have to show whether the observed activities are of biological relevance with regard to declines in fish populations in the Upper Danube River.

Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) inducers and estrogen receptor (ER) activities in surface sediments of Three Gorges Reservoir, China evaluated with in vitro cell bioassays

“…The E2 EQs of the samples that revealed a positive receptor-mediated response were between 0.3 and 1.0 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw. These values are comparable to YES E2 EQs reported by other studies, including sediments collected from the UK rivers with 0.20-13 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw (Thomas et al 2004) and German rivers with 0.03-1.3 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw (Grund et al 2011), as well as the values of sediment analysis from Dutch inland and estuarine waters ranging from 0.10 to 1.2 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw (Legler et al 2002) and from Chinese Liao River with non-detectable to 6.04 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw ). On the other hand, sediment YES-E2 EQs reported in our present study are much greater than those reported in other studies, including sediments from the UK estuaries with 0.021-0.03 ng E2 EQ g −1 SEQ (Peck et al 2004), from Dutch inland and estuarine waters with 0.005 and 0.34 ng E2 EQ g −1 SEQ (Houtman et al 2006), and sediment from a Korean lake with E2 EQs ranging from 0.003 to 0.064 ng E2 EQ g −1 dw (Koh and Khim 2005).…”

Effect-directed analysis (EDA) in aquatic ecotoxicology: state of the art and future challenges

“…A combination of the triad approach with together with EDA is a promising conceptual framework to overcome this shortcoming (Chapman and Hollert 2006) these include the potential of chemicals to interact with the nuclear sex hormone receptors (estrogen and androgen receptor) or to affect the synthesis of steroid hormones. Recent studies have demonstrated, however, that some of these assays such as the L-YES (Wagner and Oehlmann 2009) and the H295R Steroidogenesis Assay (Gracia et al 2008;Grund et al 2009;Hecker et al 2007;Hecker and Giesy 2008) have very great promise as biotests in support of EDA of complex environmental samples. Initial studies with sediments and sewage treatment plant effluents have revealed differential effects when using a combination of different bioassays that capture estrogenic, steroidogenic, dioxin-like, mutagenic/genotoxic and teratogenic effects, fractionation, and chemical analysis, demonstrating the necessity of holistic screening approaches.…”

Endocrine disruptor screening: regulatory perspectives and needs

“…A number of studies have been conducted to characterize the endocrine potential of municipal effluents [24,25], surface water [26][27][28] and sediments [26,27,29,30], and there has been increasing awareness of the need for testing approaches targeting EDCs to be included into current environmental assessments and monitoring [31][32][33][34][35][36] …”

“…For example, Kidd et al [7] demonstrated declines in populations of certain fish species after exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of the synthetic estrogen ethinylestradiol in whole lake experiments. Additionally, various studies demonstrated the potential of sediment-bound EDCs to cause adverse effects in aquatic wildlife using different in vitro and in vivo assays [26,27,29,30,[37][38][39]. Recent studies predicted that the objective of the WFD to achieve good ecological/chemical status by 2015 is likely to fail in many European catchment areas because of the continuing remobilization of sedimentbound pollutants in heavily contaminated old sediments [40][41][42].…”