| 1. |
- Dewapriya, Pradeep, et al.
(författare)
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Novel Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances Discovered in Cattle Exposed to AFFF-Impacted Groundwater
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 57:36, s. 13635-13645
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The leaching of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) from Australian firefighting training grounds has resulted in extensive contamination of groundwater and nearby farmlands. Humans, farm animals, and wildlife in these areas may have been exposed to complex mixtures of PFASs from aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs). This study aimed to identify PFAS classes in pooled whole blood (n = 4) and serum (n = 4) from cattle exposed to AFFF-impacted groundwater and potentially discover new PFASs in blood. Thirty PFASs were identified at various levels of confidence (levels 1a–5a), including three novel compounds: (i) perfluorohexanesulfonamido 2-hydroxypropanoic acid (FHxSA-HOPrA), (ii) methyl((perfluorohexyl)sulfonyl)sulfuramidous acid, and (iii) methyl((perfluorooctyl)sulfonyl)sulfuramidous acid, belonging to two different classes. Biotransformation intermediate, perfluorohexanesulfonamido propanoic acid (FHxSA-PrA), hitherto unreported in biological samples, was detected in both whole blood and serum. Furthermore, perfluoroalkyl sulfonamides, including perfluoropropane sulfonamide (FPrSA), perfluorobutane sulfonamide (FBSA), and perfluorohexane sulfonamide (FHxSA) were predominantly detected in whole blood, suggesting that these accumulate in the cell fraction of blood. The suspect screening revealed several fluoroalkyl chain-substituted PFAS. The results suggest that targeting only the major PFASs in the plasma or serum of AFFF-exposed mammals likely underestimates the toxicological risks associated with exposure. Future studies of AFFF-exposed populations should include whole-blood analysis with high-resolution mass spectrometry to understand the true extent of PFAS exposure.
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| 2. |
- Dulio, Valeria, et al.
(författare)
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The NORMAN Association and the European Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC) : let’s cooperate!
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Sciences Europe. - : Springer. - 2190-4707 .- 2190-4715. ; 32:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC) is currently under development as a joint research and innovation programme to strengthen the scientific basis for chemical risk assessment in the EU. The plan is to bring chemical risk assessors and managers together with scientists to accelerate method development and the production of necessary data and knowledge, and to facilitate the transition to next-generation evidence-based risk assessment, a non-toxic environment and the European Green Deal. The NORMAN Network is an independent, well-established and competent network of more than 80 organisations in the field of emerging substances and has enormous potential to contribute to the implementation of the PARC partnership. NORMAN stands ready to provide expert advice to PARC, drawing on its long experience in the development, harmonisation and testing of advanced tools in relation to chemicals of emerging concern and in support of a European Early Warning System to unravel the risks of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and close the gap between research and innovation and regulatory processes. In this commentary we highlight the tools developed by NORMAN that we consider most relevant to supporting the PARC initiative: (i) joint data space and cutting-edge research tools for risk assessment of contaminants of emerging concern; (ii) collaborative European framework to improve data quality and comparability; (iii) advanced data analysis tools for a European early warning system and (iv) support to national and European chemical risk assessment thanks to harnessing, combining and sharing evidence and expertise on CECs. By combining the extensive knowledge and experience of the NORMAN network with the financial and policy-related strengths of the PARC initiative, a large step towards the goal of a non-toxic environment can be taken.
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| 3. |
- Hollender, Juliane, et al.
(författare)
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NORMAN guidance on suspect and non-target screening in environmental monitoring
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Sciences Europe. - : Springer Nature. - 2190-4707 .- 2190-4715. ; 35:1
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increasing production and use of chemicals and awareness of their impact on ecosystems and humans has led to large interest for broadening the knowledge on the chemical status of the environment and human health by suspect and non-target screening (NTS). To facilitate effective implementation of NTS in scientific, commercial and governmental laboratories, as well as acceptance by managers, regulators and risk assessors, more harmonisation in NTS is required. To address this, NORMAN Association members involved in NTS activities have prepared this guidance document, based on the current state of knowledge. The document is intended to provide guidance on performing high quality NTS studies and data interpretation while increasing awareness of the promise but also pitfalls and challenges associated with these techniques. Guidance is provided for all steps; from sampling and sample preparation to analysis by chromatography (liquid and gas-LC and GC) coupled via various ionisation techniques to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HRMS/MS), through to data evaluation and reporting in the context of NTS. Although most experience within the NORMAN network still involves water analysis of polar compounds using LC-HRMS/MS, other matrices (sediment, soil, biota, dust, air) and instrumentation (GC, ion mobility) are covered, reflecting the rapid development and extension of the field. Due to the ongoing developments, the different questions addressed with NTS and manifold techniques in use, NORMAN members feel that no standard operation process can be provided at this stage. However, appropriate analytical methods, data processing techniques and databases commonly compiled in NTS workflows are introduced, their limitations are discussed and recommendations for different cases are provided. Proper quality assurance, quantification without reference standards and reporting results with clear confidence of identification assignment complete the guidance together with a glossary of definitions. The NORMAN community greatly supports the sharing of experiences and data via open science and hopes that this guideline supports this effort.
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| 4. |
- Mohammed Taha, Hiba, et al.
(författare)
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The NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE) : facilitating European and worldwide collaboration on suspect screening in high resolution mass spectrometry
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Sciences Europe. - : Springer. - 2190-4707 .- 2190-4715. ; 34:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The NORMAN Association (https://www.norman-network.com/) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE; https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/) in 2015, following the NORMAN collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals that are expected to occur in the environment, along with the accompanying expert knowledge and references, has become a valuable knowledge base for “suspect screening” lists. The NORMAN-SLE now serves as a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) chemical information resource worldwide.Results: The NORMAN-SLE contains 99 separate suspect list collections (as of May 2022) from over 70 contributors around the world, totalling over 100,000 unique substances. The substance classes include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, pesticides, natural toxins, high production volume substances covered under the European REACH regulation (EC: 1272/2008), priority contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and regulatory lists from NORMAN partners. Several lists focus on transformation products (TPs) and complex features detected in the environment with various levels of provenance and structural information. Each list is available for separate download. The merged, curated collection is also available as the NORMAN Substance Database (NORMAN SusDat). Both the NORMAN-SLE and NORMAN SusDat are integrated within the NORMAN Database System (NDS). The individual NORMAN-SLE lists receive digital object identifiers (DOIs) and traceable versioning via a Zenodo community (https://zenodo.org/communities/norman-sle), with a total of > 40,000 unique views, > 50,000 unique downloads and 40 citations (May 2022). NORMAN-SLE content is progressively integrated into large open chemical databases such as PubChem (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and the US EPA’s CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/), enabling further access to these lists, along with the additional functionality and calculated properties these resources offer. PubChem has also integrated significant annotation content from the NORMAN-SLE, including a classification browser (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=101).Conclusions: The NORMAN-SLE offers a specialized service for hosting suspect screening lists of relevance for the environmental community in an open, FAIR manner that allows integration with other major chemical resources. These efforts foster the exchange of information between scientists and regulators, supporting the paradigm shift to the “one substance, one assessment” approach. New submissions are welcome via the contacts provided on the NORMAN-SLE website (https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/).
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| 5. |
- Rousis, Nikolaos I., et al.
(författare)
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Socioeconomic status and public health in Australia : A wastewater-based study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environment International. - : Elsevier BV. - 0160-4120 .- 1873-6750. ; 167
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Analysis of untreated municipal wastewater is recognized as an innovative approach to assess population exposure to or consumption of various substances. Currently, there are no published wastewater-based studies investigating the relationships between catchment social, demographic, and economic characteristics with chemicals using advanced non-targeted techniques. In this study, fifteen wastewater samples covering 27% of the Australian population were collected during a population Census. The samples were analysed with a workflow employing liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry and chemometric tools for non-target analysis. Socioeconomic characteristics of catchment areas were generated using Geospatial Information Systems software. Potential correlations were explored between pseudo-mass loads of the identified compounds and socioeconomic and demographic descriptors of the wastewater catchments derived from Census data. Markers of public health (e.g., cardiac arrhythmia, cardiovascular disease, anxiety disorder and type 2 diabetes) were identified in the wastewater samples by the proposed workflow. They were positively correlated with descriptors of disadvantage in education, occupation, marital status and income, and negatively correlated with descriptors of advantage in education and occupation. In addition, markers of polypropylene glycol (PPG) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) related compounds were positively correlated with housing and occupation disadvantage. High positive correlations were found between separated and divorced people and specific drugs used to treat cardiac arrhythmia, cardiovascular disease, and depression. Our robust non-targeted methodology in combination with Census data can identify relationships between biomarkers of public health, human behaviour and lifestyle and socio-demographics of whole populations. Furthermore, it can identify specific areas and socioeconomic groups that may need more assistance than others for public health issues. This approach complements important public health information and enables large-scale national coverage with a relatively small number of samples.
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| 6. |
- Schulze, Bastian, et al.
(författare)
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Inter-laboratory mass spectrometry dataset based on passive sampling of drinking water for non-target analysis
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Data. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 2052-4463. ; 8:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Non-target analysis (NTA) employing high-resolution mass spectrometry is a commonly applied approach for the detection of novel chemicals of emerging concern in complex environmental samples. NTA typically results in large and information-rich datasets that require computer aided (ideally automated) strategies for their processing and interpretation. Such strategies do however raise the challenge of reproducibility between and within different processing workflows. An effective strategy to mitigate such problems is the implementation of inter-laboratory studies (ILS) with the aim to evaluate different workflows and agree on harmonized/standardized quality control procedures. Here we present the data generated during such an ILS. This study was organized through the Norman Network and included 21 participants from 11 countries. A set of samples based on the passive sampling of drinking water pre and post treatment was shipped to all the participating laboratories for analysis, using one pre-defined method and one locally (i.e. in-house) developed method. The data generated represents a valuable resource (i.e. benchmark) for future developments of algorithms and workflows for NTA experiments.
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