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MEETING IN CHINA: CHLORINATED VS. CHLORAMINATED DRINKING WATER: TOXICITY-BASED IDENTIFICATION OF DISINFECTION BY-PRODUCTS USING ESI-MS AND ESI-MS/MS
Citation:
RICHARDSON, S. D., F. G. CRUMLEY, F. FASANO, M. J. PLEWA, E. D. WAGNER, T. H. MIZE, P. ANGEL, R. ORLANDO, L. N. WILLIAMSON, AND M. G. BARTLETT. MEETING IN CHINA: CHLORINATED VS. CHLORAMINATED DRINKING WATER: TOXICITY-BASED IDENTIFICATION OF DISINFECTION BY-PRODUCTS USING ESI-MS AND ESI-MS/MS. Presented at Colloquium Spectroscopicum Internationale XXXV, Xiamen, CHINA, September 25 - 26, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
(1) Use a toxicity-based approach to prioritize and identify DBPs that show the greatest toxic response. (2) Comprehensively identify DBPs formed by different disinfectant regimes for the 'Four Lab Study'. (3) Determine the mechanisms of formation for potentially hazardous bromonitromethane DBPs.
Description:
Drinking water disinfection by-products (DBPs) are of concern because epidemiologic studies have shown that they are associated with bladder cancer and adverse reproductive/developmental effects in human populations, and some cause cancer in laboratory animals. As a result, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has regulated several DBPs. However, >500 DBPs have been reported in drinking water for which little or no occurrence and health data exist. In addition, there is almost no information on high molecular weight DBPs (> 1000 Da), which are indicated to comprise >50% of the total organic halide (TOX) from chlorinated drinking water. None of these high molecular weight halogenated by-products have ever been precisely identified, and there is no information on potential toxicity of this high molecular weight fraction. The goal of this research is to use a bioassay directed approach to focus identification work on the most toxicologically important DBPs. To this end, drinking water was collected from full-scale treatment plants that use chlorine and chloramines as disinfectants, and this drinking water was fractionated initially according to molecular size (through the use of ultrafiltration membranes). Mammalian cell acute genotoxicity and cytotoxicity assays were used to determine the toxicity of the fractions, and electrospray ionization (ESI)-mass spectrometry (MS) and ESI-MSIMS were used to obtain structural information on the DBPs in those fractions.