Associations of residential and occupational history with the distribution of persistent pollutant mixtures in adipose tissue samples
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Persistent Toxic Substances (PTSs) are a group of chemicals of high concern due to their ubiquity in the environment, in addition to their toxicity, persistence, and bioaccumulation characteristics (Jones and de Voogt, 1999; United Nations Environment Program, 2018; Wong et al., 2012). PTSs include several pollutants particularly relevant for public health, such as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). POPs comprise Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), which have been used in several industrial applications (Cetin et al., 2007; Eljarrat et al., 2008); and Organochlorine Pesticides (OCPs), widely used in agriculture, seed preservation and public health campaigns in the past, but whose residues are still present nowadays in soils and animal tissues, including human tissues, in spite of strict legal restrictions on their production and uses since the 1980s decade (Arrebola et al., 2013a; Fernández et al., 2000; Luzardo et al., 2006; Mercado et al., 2013). As a result, human exposure to low levels of POPs is frequent and generalized (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009; Porta et al., 2008), and has been linked to several chronic diseases (Arrebola et al., 2013b; Charazac et al., 2019; Koskenniemi et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2014; Li et al., 2006; Porta, 2006).
On the other side, current and past toxic metal(loid) contamination in soils, water and food caused by industry, mining, pesticides and transports has been widely reported (Castro-González and Méndez-Armenta, 2008; Lokeshappa et al., 2012; Mohmand et al., 2015; Peris et al., 2007), and mitigation measures have been undertaken in order to reduce the exposure to these substances and their related health consequences. Some metal(loid)s, such as aluminium (Al), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and arsenic (As), do not have a known biological function in the human organism and there are evidences of potential adverse effects for human health even at very low concentrations. Others, like chromium (Cr) and cobalt (Co), play a role in some biological processes, but at certain doses can contribute to the development of diseases (Agarwal et al., 2011; Byrne et al., 2013; Freire et al., 2018; Jaishankar et al., 2014; Sabath and Robles-Osorio, 2012; Tinkov et al., 2015).
Considering the ubiquity of the exposure to most PTSs, human biomonitoring has become essential in order to assess the body burden of many different pollutants, since internal pollutant levels account for all possible exposure routes (Louro et al., 2019). Human biomonitoring studies have traditionally focused on blood, serum, urine, nails and/or hair measurements, some of them providing meaningful information about severity and timing of the exposure (Clarkson et al., 2012; Porta et al., 2008). However, adipose tissue is considered a major matrix for long-term POP accumulation, offering promising insights for exposure assessment (Artacho-Cordón et al., 2016; Mustieles and Arrebola, 2020). Nevertheless, adipose tissue POP concentrations have been scarcely used in the epidemiological context because of the invasive techniques required for sampling (Artacho-Cordón et al., 2015; La Merrill Michele et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2017; Mustieles and Arrebola, 2020). On the other hand, little has been investigated about the biological meaning of metal(loid)s concentrations in adipose tissue, although it has been recently suggested as a potentially relevant matrix for exposure and effect assessment (Echeverría et al., 2019; Freire et al., 2020; Mustieles and Arrebola, 2020; Qin et al., 2010; Rodríguez-Pérez et al., 2018; Tinkov et al., 2015).
General populations are frequently exposed to PTSs through air, water and food produced in a contaminated area/soil, among others. Notable inter-regional differences have been found in the internal PTS levels that, interestingly, have also been reported in subgroups within the same geographical region, e.g., rural vs urban zones (Harner et al., 2004), near vs far from industry facilities (García-Pérez et al., 2007), as well as clean vs polluted drinking water from aquifers (Schwarzenbach et al., 2010).
Occupational exposure to PTSs has been analyzed before, linking activities like agriculture, industry, cleaning and building with the internal levels of some contaminants (Okeme and Arrandale, 2019; Schettgen et al., 2018; Varona et al., 2010). Accordingly, some occupations might be considered to pose a higher risk of developing PTS-related diseases, such as mining and other industrial activities (Montano, 2014). Housekeeping and informal cleaning are usually thought to be less hazardous, although they involve frequent contact with products containing a number of highly toxic substances (Bello et al., 2009; Medina-Ramon et al., 2003).
It is noteworthy that the majority of the abovementioned information has been generated based on studies focused on individual pollutants, even when the overall mixture effects might be more important than the exposure to low doses of one single chemical (Kortenkamp, 2007; Solomon et al., 2016; Svingen and Vinggaard, 2016). Indeed, addressing human exposure characterization from a mixture perspective would help to identify clusters particularly exposed and, consequently, potentially vulnerable subpopulations.
This research is framed within GraMo adult cohort, in which our group has previously characterized exposure levels to different PTSs and their potential health effects (Arrebola et al, 2009, 2010, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Echeverría et al., 2019; Freire et al., 2020; Rodríguez-Pérez et al., 2018). Specifically, the present work aimed to perform a step forward on human exposure assessment by identifying clusters of individuals with similar co-exposure profiles, and studying their relationship with participants’ occupational and residential history.
Section snippets
Study area
This study was conceived as part of a wider research aimed to analyze environmental factors affecting the development of chronic diseases in GraMo, an adult cohort set up in the province of Granada, Southern Spain (Fig. 1).
Granada Province, in the South-West of Spain, includes rural, semi-rural and urban zones, with a population of over 915,000 inhabitants within an area of 12,531 km2. Landscape and soil exhibit strong variations between the Mediterranean coast, the interior valleys and the
Adipose tissue concentrations of individual pollutants and their mixtures in the study population
Adipose tissue concentrations of the selected contaminants are listed in Table 2. Among the metal(loid)s, the highest median concentrations corresponded to Al (10100 ng/g adipose tissue), followed by Ni, Cr and Pb. As, Co and Cd were found in the lowest median concentrations (<10 ng/g adipose tissue). PCB-153 and PCB-180 were the POPs found in the highest median concentrations (>180 ng/g lipid), whereas α-HCH, β-HCH and dicofol accounted for the lowest (<10 ng/g lipid). The distribution of
Conclusion
The present study offers novel insights on the distribution of clusters of PTSs in adipose tissue of a widely characterized population from Southern Spain, and the influence of lifetime residence and occupation on them. These analyses will help further elucidation of the long-term potential health effects of these chemicals, as it is currently being performed in GraMo cohort.
Credit author statement
Ruth Echeverría: Software, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Petra Vrhovnik: Resources, Writing – review & editing, Inmaculada Salcedo-Bellido: Writing – review & editing, Francisco M. Pérez-Carrascosa: Data curation, Celia Gómez-Peña: Writing – review & editing, Željka Fiket: Resources, Writing – review & editing, Piedad Martín-Olmedo: Writing – review & editing, Nicolás Olea: Writing – review & editing, Mariana F. Fernández: Writing – review
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This research would have not been possible without the collaboration of the participants in GraMo cohort. This article will be part of the Ph.D. thesis of Ruth Echeverría in the context of the “Clinical Medicine and Public Health Program” of the University of Granada.
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Associations of accumulated persistent organic pollutants in breast adipose tissue with the evolution of breast cancer after surgery
2023, Science of the Total EnvironmentPublic healthcare costs associated with long-term exposure to mixtures of persistent organic pollutants in two areas of Southern Spain: A longitudinal analysis.
2022, Environmental ResearchCitation Excerpt :No association was observed between POP concentrations and AHC in the overall population (Table 3). Given that we previously observed different OCP levels in the two study areas (Arrebola et al., 2009, 2013a; Echeverría et al., 2020), and considering that health expenditure might be influenced by the reference hospital as well as specific sociodemographic characteristics of the populations, we performed sensitivity analyses stratified by residence (Urban/Semi-rural) (Supplementary table S3). In the semi-rural area, HCB and β-HCH were positively associated with increased APC (Fig. 1, Supplementary table S3), while no association was observed in the urban area.
Historical exposure to persistent organic pollutants and cardiovascular disease: A 15-year longitudinal analysis focused on pharmaceutical consumption in primary care
2021, Environment InternationalCitation Excerpt :Main characteristics of the study population, adipose tissue POP concentrations and detection levels are summarized in Table 1, and have been discussed elsewhere (Arrebola et al., 2009, 2010; Arrebola, 2013). As reported elsewhere, moderate-to-high Spearman correlations were found for both the three PCB congeners (0.86 ≤ ρ ≤ 0.95) the group of OCPs (0.69 ≤ ρ ≤ 0.84) (Echeverría et al., 2020). The distribution of ACI values in the study population is described in Table 1 and Fig. 1.
Differential Bioaccumulation Patterns of α, β-Hexachlorobenzene and Dicofol in Adipose Tissue from the GraMo Cohort (Southern Spain)
2022, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health