TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zimmermann, Lisa
A1  - Bartosova, Zdenka
A1  - Braun, Katharina
A1  - Oehlmann, Jörg
A1  - Völker, Carolin
A1  - Wagner, Martin
T1  - Plastic products leach chemicals that induce in vitro toxicity under realistic use conditions
T2  - Environmental science & technology
N2  - Plastic products contain complex mixtures of extractable chemicals that can be toxic. However, humans and wildlife will only be exposed to plastic chemicals that are released under realistic conditions. Thus, we investigated the toxicological and chemical profiles leaching into water from 24 everyday plastic products covering eight polymer types. We performed migration experiments over 10 days at 40 °C and analyzed the migrates using four in vitro bioassays and nontarget high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF-MSE). All migrates induced baseline toxicity, 22 an oxidative stress response, 13 antiandrogenicity, and one estrogenicity. Overall, between 17 and 8681 relevant chemical features were present in the migrates. In other words, between 1 and 88% of the plastic chemicals associated with one product were migrating. Further, we tentatively identified ∼8% of all detected features implying that most plastic chemicals remain unknown. While low-density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polyurethane induced most toxicological endpoints, a generalization for other materials is not possible. Our results demonstrate that plastic products readily leach many more chemicals than previously known, some of which are toxic in vitro. This highlights that humans are exposed to many more plastic chemicals than currently considered in public health science and policies.
KW  - food contact materials
KW  - polymers
KW  - additives
KW  - exposure
KW  - exposome
KW  - migration
KW  - bioassays
KW  - nontarget
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/62953
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-629539
SN  - 1520-5851
N1  - This study was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (01UU1603A-C). M.W. acknowledges funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 860720.
VL  - 55
IS  - 17
SP  - 11814
EP  - 11823
PB  - American Chemical Society
CY  - Columbus, Ohio
ER  -