Surface water can contain countless organic micropollutants, and targeted chemical analysis alone may only detect a small fraction of the chemicals present. Consequently, bioanalytical tools can be applied complementary to chemical analysis to detect the effects of complex chemical mixtures. In this study, bioassays indicative of activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), activation of the pregnane X receptor (PXR), activation of the estrogen receptor (ER), adaptive stress responses to oxidative stress (Nrf2), genotoxicity (p53) and inflammation (NF-κB) and the fish embryo toxicity test were applied along with chemical analysis to water extracts from the Danube River. Mixture-toxicity modeling was applied to determine the contribution of detected chemicals to the biological effect. Effect concentrations for between 0 to 13 detected chemicals could be found in the literature for the different bioassays. Detected chemicals explained less than 0.2% of the biological effect in the PXR activation, adaptive stress response, and fish embryo toxicity assays, while five chemicals explained up to 80% of ER activation, and three chemicals explained up to 71% of AhR activation. This study highlights the importance of fingerprinting the effects of detected chemicals.

Department of Ecosystem Analysis Institute for Environmental Research RWTH Aachen University 52074 Aachen Germany

Department of Environmental Toxicology University of California Davis California 95616 United States

Environmental Toxicology Center for Applied Geosciences Eberhard Karls University Tübingen 72074 Tübingen Germany

Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques INERIS Unité d'Ecotoxicologie 60550 Verneuil en Halatte France

National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology The University of Queensland Brisbane QLD 4108 Australia

Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment Masaryk University Kamenice 753 5 62500 Brno Czech Republic

Smart Water Research Centre School of Environment Griffith University Southport QLD 4222 Australia

UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research 04318 Leipzig Germany

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org

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