Degradation And Determination Of Environmental Estrogens

Environmental estrogens can interference normal endocrine action of animals and human beings. It has been demonstrated that environmental estrogens are related to reproductive difficulty, abnormal development and diseases of immune system. The problem of environmental estrogens has become a global focus problem. It's meaningful to develop a fast and efficient method for degradation and determination of environmental estrogens.In the paper, the recent progress of environmental estrogens has been reviewed, including definition, characteristic, classify of environmental estrogens, and the method of degradation and determination. Methods for separation and determination of 2,4-dichlorophenol, 2,6-dichlorophenol, 3,4-dichlorophenol, 4-nonylphenol, estradiol, estriol, estrone, diethylstilbestrol, norethisterone, medroxy progesterone acetate and progesterone using gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) have been developed. The chromatographic conditions, including column temperature, mobile phase and detection wavelength were investigated.Isomers of dichlorophenol, 4-nonylphenol and diethylstilbestrol were degradation under the irradiation of UV. Three dichlorophenol isomers all degraded rapidly under the irradiation of UV. The difference of their photodegradatic percentage under the same conditions when single component and a mixture degradation was investigated with GC method. Photodegradation characters of 4-nonylphenol in water using TiO₂ as catalysis was researched. Under the optimized condition, the degradation percentage of 4-nonylphenol in simulated water sample could be up to 90 % when photodegradatic time higher than 60 min. The degradation rate was strongly influenced by the initial concentration, TiO₂ amount, pH value and lightsource distance. Photocatalytic degradation of diethylstilbestrol was carried out in the presence of nanosized TiO₂, ZnO and TiO₂-ZnO with UV, and the photodegradation reactions were found to follow the first order kinetics law. Compared with TiO₂ and ZnO, nano-TiO₂-ZnO was more efficient for degradation of diethylstilbestrol. The enhancement of...