Bioassays for Detecting Estrogenic Substances in Surface Waters

Estrogenic substances are biologically active at very low concentrations at which they can be poorly analysed chemically. As an alternative, bioassays can be used to detect these substances in surface waters. Bioassays are also able to measure the total estrogenic activity of all active substances in the sample. Various in vitro assays are available that can, however, provide different results for the same sample. Therefore, the variability and reproducibility of five different assays with artificially generated and natural water samples are analyzed and the suitability of the assays for environmental monitoring is assessed.

Applied test systems 

• Yeast Estrogen Screen (YES)
• ER-Calux
• T47D-Kbluc
• MELN
• GeneBLAzer ER

Publication

Kunz, P.Y., Simon, E., Creusot, N., Jayasinghe, B.S., Kienle, C., Maletz, S., Schifferli, A., Schönlau, C., Aït-Aïssa, S., Denslow, N.D., Hollert, H., Werner, I., Vermeirssen, E.L.M. (2017) Effect-based tools for monitoring estrogenic mixtures: Evaluation of five in vitro bioassays. Water Research 110, 378-388

Download at Sciencedirect