PT07 Chemical and Biological Analysis of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Tuesday
(PT119) Analysing hormonal activity in wastewater samples using a combination of yeast biosensors and chemical methods.
Leskinen, P1, Virta, M1, Karp, M1, Salste, L2, Kronberg, L2, 1 University of Turku, Turku, Finland2 Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
ABSTRACT- Numerous studies have shown that fish that have been caged near the outlet of wastewater treatment plants have increased levels of vitellogenin in their plasma. It has been suggested that the feminization effect is mainly due to the presence of estrogens of human origin in the wastewaters. However, when analysing the hormonal activity of wastewaters, the effect of sample extraction on the analysis results has rarely been examined. An extraction procedure that has been optimised for natural hormones can be a source of misleading results, as some xenoestrogens with different chemical properties may be lost in the extraction procedure. The purpose of this study was to analyse to which level the hormones excreted by humans are responsible for hormonal activity of wastewaters and to identify other chromatographically obtained fractions of wastewater that show hormonal activity. Further, we examined the efficiency of solid phase extraction (SPE) procedure in recovering estrogenic activity by comparing the activity of unextracted wastewater samples to activity of samples concentrated by SPE procedure or freeze-drying. For determining the total estrogenic activity in extracted and unextracted samples we have developed a bioluminescent yeast test battery including sensor strains for estrogenic and androgenic activity and toxicity of the sample. The specific detection of estrogenic hormones was done by means of liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), using electrospray ionization (ESI) in negative mode.
Key words: wastewater, endocrine disrupters, yeast test, chromatographical fractionation