Environmental occurrence, abundance, and potential toxicity of polychlorinated biphenyl congeners: considerations for a congener-specific analysis

Environmental Health Perspectives
V A McFarland, J U Clarke

Abstract

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as environmental contaminants often cannot be adequately described by reference to Aroclors or to total PCBs. Although there are 209 possible PCB configurations (congeners), perhaps half that number account for nearly all of the environmental contamination attributable to PCBs. Still fewer congeners are both prevalent and either demonstrably or potentially toxic. If potential toxicity, environmental prevalence, and relative abundance in animal tissues are used as criteria, the number of environmentally threatening PCB congeners reduces to about thirty-six. Twenty-five of these account for 50 to 75% of total PCBs in tissue samples of fish, invertebrates, birds, and mammals. A few PCB congeners that are sterically similar to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) are directly toxic. Other PCB congeners, as well as those that are directly toxic, may also be involved in toxicity indirectly by stimulating the production of (inducing) bioactivating enzyme systems. The most consequential of these have the ability to induce aryl hydrocarbon metabolizing mixed-function oxidases (MFOs). A result can be an increased capacity for bioactivation of otherwise nontoxic foreign compounds such as cert...Continue Reading

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