Assessment of organochlorine hydrocarbons transformation in contaminated agricultural products and foodstuffs under gamma-radiation

Abstract

The problem of an estimation of organochlorinated pollutants transformation (particularly organochlorinated pesticides (OCP) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)) under gamma-irradiation has become important in connection with radiation technologies application in the food industry. According to earlier researches, small doses of OCP lead to serious damages of an organism, comparable with damages from high doses. Among radiolysis products of OCP in model solutions various substances on a structure have been found out. Though of trace concentration of each of them, in sum with the initial pesticides residue they make up significant of mass contamination (as shown earlier up to 90% from initial OCP). In this work fish samples (bream) containing OCPs (15.20 ng/g of hexachlorocyclohexane isomers and 87.10 ng/g of DDT and its metabolites), as well as PCB (18.51 ng/g) were studied. The minced fish was irradiated at dose of 10 kGy with dose rate of 1.35 Gy/sec. Then, by methods of gas-liquid chromatography (GLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), it was found that the OCPs degradation varied from 3 up to 61% and the PCB degradation - 24-52%. Significant complication of chemical composition was shown comparing to the primary biological sample contamination. As a result of fish irradiation, secondary pollution appeared that included residues of primary organochlorine hydrocarbons and their radiation-induced metabolites. Among the investigated OCPs the most stable proved to be alfa-hexachlorocyclohexane (alfa-HCH), the least stable - DDT which corresponds to the previous findings about the radiation stability of OCPs in model solutions. Mass spectra of the irradiated samples of minced bream showed the presence of radiation metabolites of OCPs, that had also been found at irradiation of model solutions of 2,2-di(4-chlorophenyl)-1-chlorethylene (DDMU), DDD and 1a, 2e, 3e, 4e, 5e-pentahlorcyclohexane. There was revealed a decomposition product formed during the deep destruction of chlorinated xenobiotics molecules - 1,1,2-trichloro-4-methyl-1-pentene (C6H9Cl3); this substance was absent in the original fish samples. In the samples of irradiated fish there was not defined any OCP oxidation products or any intermediates that may be due to the conditions of sample preparation. To estimate toxicity of the secondary pollution, integral bioassays methods are proposed to apply. Introduction.