Objective
Current available information suggests that a number of fishery products, from European marine waters, may exceed the recently revised German tolerance level for toxaphene residues. The new German tolerance level will be 0.1 mg kg-1 wet weight for the sum of three indicator congeners. While it is essential that the threat to the consumer from toxaphene residues in fishery products is fully understood and quantified, tolerance levels should only be applied with sound scientific advice. At the moment a sound scientific toxicological basis for this tolerance levels does not exist. The tolerance level could result in a serious trade ban should other member and non member countries apply a similar tolerance levels.
The current project brings together an interdisciplinary group of scientists with expertise in analytical and environmental chemistry, toxicology, fisheries biology and statistics. This group will focus their investigations on i) analytical methods for toxaphene analyses, ii) monitoring of toxaphene levels in European fishery products and spatial distribution of toxaphene in European waters and iii) the carcinogen city of toxaphene and the effect of environmental transformation on the toxicity of toxaphene. This will provide essential management information on: i) the magnitude of existing or potential problems with regard to toxaphene ii) the most efficient and cost effective approach to monitoring iii) the real toxicological risk to the consumer and iv) possible tolerance levels for toxaphene in fish tissues.
The first half-year of the MATT project was primarily spent on planning and on writing of the literature review on the developments in toxaphene analysis, new environmental data and toxicological developments, particularly during the last 5 years.
The analytical part is focused on the comparability of different analytical methods. A first inter laboratory study was organised between the partners to study the repeatability and reproducibility of a congener-specific analysis, using three congeners, Parlar nrs. 26, 2-exo, 4-endo, 5-exo,6-endo-8b,8c,10a,10b-octachlorobornane, 50, 2-exo, 3-endo, 5-exo, 6-endo, 8b, 8c, 9c, 10a, 10b-nonachlorobornane and 62 2, 2, 5, 5, 8b, 8c, 9c, 10a, 10b-nonachlorobornane. Cleaned extracts and standard solution were analysed by four of the five partners and the first results indicate a good comparability with GC/ECD (between-laboratory standard deviation <10%, repeatability standard deviations <3%). GC/MS results will follow. Despite a good comparability of GC/ECD results it is possible that the peaks analyses would consist of more than one compound. Therefore, multi-dimensional GC techniques will be used to check the purity of these peaks in fish extracts. In addition, possible decomposition of toxaphene congeners during splitless injection will be studied.
As soon as a consensus on analytical methodology between the partners is obtained, a large number of fish samples will be analysed for the three toxaphene congeners, being three of the most persistent congeners, in a baseline study. A number of fish samples has already been sampled in 1997 in the North Sea, Irish Sea, English Channel, the Baltic, the Atlantic and Arctic waters and more samples will be added in 1998 to a total of ca. 280 samples.
The toxicological part of the project is focused on the carcinogenicity of toxaphene, and in particular the carcinogenecity of weathered toxaphene mixtures. Toxaphene has been known as a potent liver carcinogen in rodent carcinogenicity bioassays since the late 1970s (Reuber, 1979). In addition, toxaphene has been reported to score positive in mutagenecity assays as well as to inhibit gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC), e.g. an in-vitro assay for tumour promotion potential (Hooper et al, 1979). These data suggest that toxaphene could act both at the initiation and promotional levels of tumour formation. This allows the use of semi-chronic in-vivo tumour promotion bioassays, rather than long term (2 year) carcinogenecity studies to determine and compare the tumourigenic potency of toxaphene technical mixtures with toxaphene residues extracted from fish products. Cod will be fed with toxaphene-enriched food in an aquarium experiment. The livers will be dissected and extracted. The cleaned extracts will be used in in vivo studies with rats. In addition in vitro studies will be carried out. An UV radiated technical toxaphene mixture will also be used in both in the in vivo and in in vitro studies. The in-vitro assays proposed to be used to compare the carcinogenecity of the extracted toxaphene to the technical toxaphene mixture are an Ames mutagenicity test with and without metabolic activation and a gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) test, using the mouse liver hepatoma cell line hepalclc7. To test for liver toxicity the cytochrome P450 induction, CYP1A1/2, CYP2B1, 2B2, PROD tests will be employed. For the in-vivo tumour promotion studies the altered hepatic foci model will be used. Rats will be partially hepatectomised and treated with NDEA as an initiator regime, followed by a 25-week toxaphene promotion treatment. The foci will be quantified by image analysis.
The project will run until the end of 1999.
References
Alder, L., H. Beck, S. Khandker, H. Karl and I. Lehman (1995). Levels of toxaphene indicator compounds (chlorobornanes) in fish. Organohalogen Compounds 26, 323-328.
Boer, J. de and P.G. Wester (1993). Determination of toxaphene in human milk from Nicaragua and in fish and marine mammals from the Northeaster Atlantic and the North sea. Chemosphere 27, 1879-1890.
Boer, J. de, H.-J. de Geus and U.A.Th. Brinkman (1997). Multidimensional gas chromatographic analysis of toxaphene. Environ. Sci. Technol. 31, 873-879.
Hooper, N.K. B.N. Ames, M.A. Saleh and J.E. Casida (1979). Toxaphene, a complex mixture of polychloroterpenes and a major insecticide, is mutagenic. Science 205, 591-593.
Kallenborn, R., M. Oehme, W. Vetter and H. Parlar (1994). Enantiomer selective separation of toxaphene congeners isolated from seal blubber and obtained by synthesis. Chemosphere 28, 89-98.
Muir, D.C.G. and J. de Boer (1995). Recent developments in the analysis and environmental chemistry of toxaphene with emphasis on the marine environment. Trends Anal. Chem. 14, 56-66.
Reuber, M.D. (1979). Carcinogenecity of toxaphene: a review. J. Toxicol. Environ. Health 5, 729-748.
Saleh, M.A. (1991). Toxaphene: chemistry, biochemistry, toxicity and environmental fate. Rev. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 118, 1-85.
Voldner, E.C. and Y.F. Li (1993). Global usage of toxaphene. Chemosphere 27, 2073-2078.
Wania, F. and D. Mackay (1995). A global model for persistent organic chemicals. Sci. Total Environ. 160/161, 211-232.
Over the last 50 years toxaphene (chlorinated camphene) has been produced and used as a pesticide extensively, mainly in cotton growing. Its production figures are comparable to those of polychlorinated biphenyls (>1.3 106 tons) (Voldner and Li, 1995). It was banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1982. However, in the early 1990s the presence of toxaphene in marine fish in Europe caused concern with regard to human health in relation with fish consumption (de Boer et al., 1993, Alder et al., 1995). It was assumed that the presence of toxaphene in European waters is caused by aerial transportation of toxaphene from Central America (de Boer et al., 1993). Similarly, very high toxaphene concentrations have been found in the Arctic, which were due to aerial transportation of toxaphene from more southern latitudes in the USA (Wania and Mackay, 1995). In the early 1990s several reviews have been written on the subject of toxaphene (Saleh, 1991, Muir and de Boer, 1995). However, since toxaphene was found in European waters, fast developments have taken place, particularly in the analytical chemistry of toxaphene (Kallenborn et al, 1994, de Boer et al., 1997). An European research project called "Investigation into the monitoring, analysis and toxicity of toxaphene" (MATT), started in 1997.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences chemical sciences analytical chemistry
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1970 AB IJmuiden
Netherlands
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