"Examples include lead, certain PFAS, flame retardant chemicals, and certain phthalates … So public policies can be effective in preventing exposures that can be harmful ... We hope this is further data and evidence that support government policies that require industries to tell us where they are using their chemicals and how we might be exposed to them..."
This proof-of-concept study utilized pilot data from 30 paired maternal and cord serum samples (n = 60): mother’s average age 32, almost half Hispanic, over a third non-Hispanic white, 17% non-Hispanic Asians, Pacific Islanders, and African Americans; and 50% of the group born outside the US but living here an average 22 years.
Co-first authors are Aolin Wang, PhD, and Dimitri Panagopoulos Abrahamsson, PhD, postdoctoral fellows in UCSF's obstetrics and gynecology department. According to Abrahamsson, this technology (high-resolution mass spectrometry[1][2][3]ff)
is relatively new in research and had not previously been used to scan for chemicals in pregnant women and their infants.
Because scientists often study what other scientists have studied, he said, the same chemicals tend to get attention. The wider scope made possible by the new technology helps illumine where to focus future research, he said.
A benefit of the technology is that now researchers don't have to know which chemicals they are looking for when they scan blood samples, but can observe whatever appears, he said.
Woodruff pointed out that this area of research also applies for identifying which chemicals to prioritize for environmental monitoring.
Sources:
- www.medscape.com … 951015 — medscape is the highly readable professional wing of WebMD, no paywall, but reading requires registration.
- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c05984 Suspect Screening, Prioritization, and Confirmation of Environmental Chemicals in Maternal-Newborn Pairs from San Francisco. Aolin Wang, Dimitri Panagopoulos Abrahamsson, Ting Jiang, Miaomiao Wang, Rachel Morello-Frosch, June-Soo Park, Marina Sirota, and Tracey J. Woodruff — Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (8), 5037-5049 (March 16, 2021) — DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c05984
<small>[1] wik … Resolution (mass spectrometry)
[2] wik … Mass (mass spectrometry)
[3] wik … Liquid chromatography — mass spectrometry
[4] wik … Glycan#High-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)
[5] wik … Glycome#High-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)
[6] wik … Kendrick mass… “has been adopted by scientists working in the area of high-resolution mass spectrometry, environmental analysis,[3][4][5][6] proteomics, petroleomics,[2] metabolomics,[7] polymer analysis,[8] etc.”
[7] wik … Glycomics#High-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)
[8] wik … Mass spectrometry imaging “is a technique used in mass spectrometry to visualize the spatial distribution of molecules, as biomarkers, metabolites, peptides or proteins by their molecular masses.
[9] wik … Tandem mass spectrometry</small>