Soil is an important reservoir for environmental pollutants such as pesticides. Many pesticides have been identified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) by interfering with steroid hormone receptors1,2.However, most ecological risk assessments of contaminants in soil are through routine chemical analyses that are only included known compounds3,4,and no account is taken for the biological effects such as endocrine disrupting properties. In the present work, we used a battery of dual-luciferase reporter gene assays to screen for agonistic or antagonistic steroid hormone receptors mediated effects in soils at a national scale in China. The battery included estrogen receptor (ER) effects and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) effects. The ER agonistic activities in organic extracts of soils were reported in terms of 17β-estradiol equivalent concentration (EEQ) ng kg-1(d.w.). The results showed that total estrogenic effects in these soil samples were between 0.27 and 8.29 EEQ ng kg-1 soil (d.w.). The GR antagonistic activities were calibrated regarding to a known GR-inhibitor, and were expressed as the RU486 equivalents (GEQbio). The observed GEQbio in soils ranged from 3.82 to 23.91 μg/L RU486. In addition, the geographic distributions of estrogenic effects and GR-antagonistic effects with high levels in northeast China area exhibited a strong positive correlation with each other. In conclusion, the assessment of steroid hormone specific endocrine disrupting effects of surface soil provided meaningful information regarding characterization procedure in ecological risk assessment. References: 1, Wang LM, Liu, WP, Yang CX, Pan ZY, Gan JY, Xu C, Zhao MR, Schlenk D. Enantioselectivity in estrogenic potential and uptake of bifenthrin. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2007, 31 (18) 6124-6128. 2, Zhao MR, Zhang Y, Zhuang SL, Zhang Q, Lu CS, Liu WP. Disruption of the Hormonal Network and the Enantioselectivity of Bifenthrin in Trophoblast: Maternal-Fetal Health Risk of Chiral Pesticides. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48(14): 8109-8116. 3,Zhang AP, Liu WP, Yuan HJ, Zhou SS, Su YS, Li YF.Spatial distribution of hexachlorocyclohexanes in soils in Zhejiang Province, China and correlations with elevation and temperature.Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45(15):6303-6308. 4, Niu LL, Xu C, Yao YJ, Liu K, Yang FX, Tang ML,Liu WP.Status, influences and risk assessments of hexachlorocyclohexanes in agricultural soils across China.Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013,47(21):12140-12147.

Risk assessment of endocrine disrupting effects in agricultural soils across China

251st National Meeting (2016)

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