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https://sputniknews.com/society/202103221082420912-very-concerning-scientists-detect-55-chemicals-never-before-reported-in-people/

https://archive.is/0PkmJ

‘Very Concerning’: Scientists Detect 55 Chemicals Never Before Reported in People

Many of the chemicals in our bloodstream come from consumer products or other industrial sources. Scientists have also found that chemicals in the blood of pregnant women can also travel to their newborn children through the placenta.

In a recent study published this month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, scientists at the University of California, San Franciscodetected 109 chemicals in a study of pregnant women. Fifty-five of those chemicals had never been reported in people, while 37 were “mystery chemicals,” meaning their sources and uses are unknown.

“These chemicals have probably been in people for quite some time, but our technology is now helping us to identify more of them,” Tracey J. Woodruff, who was involved in the study, said in a university release.

The scientists used high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to identify the chemicals. It allows for the detection of substances to the nearest 0.001 atomic mass units.

“It is alarming that we keep seeing certain chemicals travel from pregnant women to their children, which means these chemicals can be with us for generations,” Woodruff said.

The study also found that the chemicals were found in the blood of the pregnant women’s newborn children, suggesting that such chemicals can travel through the mother’s placenta.

Out of the 109 chemicals found in the blood samples, 40 are used as plasticizers, 28 in cosmetics, 25 in consumer products, 29 as pharmaceuticals, 23 as pesticides and three as flame retardants. In addition, seven of the chemicals are PFAS compounds. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals used in applications like carpeting and upholstery.

In addition,55 of the 109 chemicals not previously reported in people were found to have several different uses, such as being pesticides and plasticizers. However, 37 of those 55 chemicals have little or no information about their sources or uses.

“It’s very concerning that we are unable to identify the uses or sources of so many of these chemicals,” Woodruff said. “[The] EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] must do a better job of requiring the chemical industry to standardize its reporting of chemical compounds and uses. And they need to use their authority to ensure that we have adequate information to evaluate potential health harms and remove chemicals from the market that pose a risk”.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c05984

https://archive.is/P5Zbr

Suspect Screening, Prioritization, and Confirmation of Environmental Chemicals in Maternal-Newborn Pairs from San Francisco

Abstract

Our proof-of-concept study develops a suspect screening workflow to identify and prioritize potentially ubiquitous chemical exposures in matched maternal/cord blood samples, a critical period of development for future health risks. We applied liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF/MS) to perform suspect screening for ~3500 industrial chemicals on pilot data from 30 paired maternal and cord serum samples (n = 60). We matched 662 suspect features in positive ionization mode and 788 in negative ionization mode (557 unique formulas overall) to compounds in our database, and selected 208 of these for fragmentation analysis based on detection frequency, correlation in feature intensity between maternal and cord samples, and peak area differences by demographic characteristics. We tentatively identified 73 suspects through fragmentation spectra matching and confirmed 17 chemical features (15 unique compounds) using analytical standards.We tentatively identified 55 compounds not previously reported in the literature, the majority which have limited to no information about their sources or uses.Examples include (i) 1-(1-acetyl-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-4-yl)-3-dodecylpyrrolidine-2,5-dione (known high production volume chemical) (ii) methyl perfluoroundecanoate and 2-perfluorooctyl ethanoic acid (two PFAS compounds); and (iii) Sumilizer GA 80 (plasticizer). Thus, our workflow demonstrates an approach to evaluating the chemical exposome to identify and prioritize chemical exposures during a critical period of development.