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Estrogens in surface waters - sources, concentration, detection
Maršálek, Blahoslav ; Sadílek, Jan ; Maršálková, Eliška ; Endo, Valentina ; Godoy Alonso, Paula
Estrogenity in the surface water become to be a topic, where the orientation for not educated people should be difficult. At first, estrogens in the surface water cannot be substituted by the expressionenndocrine disrupting compounds (ED) what is more wide term (including estrogenity and e.g. androgenity). Compounds with estrogenic activity detected in surface waters are not only the contraceptive pills as is somewhere simplified, but it is a wide spectrum of compounds like PCB, heavy metals, pharmacs, pesticides etc. Moreover – estrogenic activity display also naturally synthetized compounds by plants (phytoestrogens), fungi (mycoestrogens), or by algae and cyanobacteria (phycoestrogens). These compounds are not analysed in the surface water yet. Exception is some rare analyses of phytoestrogens, we presume, that phycoestrogens can be produced in aquatic ecosystem in ecotoxicologically relevant concentrations. Estrogens can be detected in the water, sediments or in the aquatic biota by instrumental analyses (LC-MS/MS), or by ELISA, or e.g. by bioassays, which can detect also so called potential estrogens ( are able to bind to some of estrogen receptors, but effects in vivo were not proved yet). In the case of the comparison, or the interpretation of results from different sources we must consider the used detection method. Instrumental analyses are dedicated to selected compounds.. Bioassays represent the sum of compounds with (with proved, or potential) estrogenic activity. That is why we strongly recommend to pay an attention on the methods of sampling and analyse in the case of interpretation and comparison of estrogenity results from different resources. In the case of literature data usingincomparable methods or high detection limit we recommend the high carefulness. Where it is possible we recommend the combination of instrumental analyse with in vitro bioassays for detection of estrogenity in surface waters.
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