The benefit of multi-residue analysis in biomonitoring - an example of polycylcic aromatic hydrocarbons exposure assessment with hair analysis

摘要

Background Due to technical limitations, the assessment of exposure to PAH has often been conducted with a limited number of biomarkers or even with a single one (e.g. urinary 1-hydroxypyrene). The relevance of this "one for all" approach is however questioned by several authors, and recent studies made significant efforts to increase the number of biomarkers in order to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the global exposure to PAH. By means of a multi-residue method, the present study aimed at documenting the cumulative exposure to PAH and testing the capacity of each biomarker to be representative of the global exposure. Methods In this work, hair samples were collected from 204 women aged 25-45 y living in two Chinese cities (Baoding and Dalian) and analyzed with a multi-residue method allowing for the detection of 71 biomarkers simultaneously: 15 parent PAH and 56 PAH metabolites. Inter-biomarkers associations were tested with regression analysis and Kendall's t correlation coefficient for censored data. Results The 15 parent PAH and 31 of the metabolites were detected in at least one subject. Eight parent PAH and 7 metabolites were detected in all the samples. Although highly positive correlations were observed between some pollutants and groups of pollutants, several biomarkers only presented low levels of association with the others. On the whole, no biomarkers presented a high level of association with all the other ones. Conclusions The multi-residue method used here demonstrated the presence of at least 15 biomarkers in all the subjects and clearly highlighted the cumulative exposure of the population under study. The statistical analysis revealed that no biomarker out of the 71 tested here (being parent or metabolite) could be considered representative of all the other ones. The results highlight the benefit of multi-residue methods over single "surrogate biomarker" to better document individual's exposome.