• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.462-471
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• 2021

Background: The number of synthesized chemicals has rapidly increased over the past decade. For many chemicals, there is a lack of information on toxicity. With the current movement toward reducing animal testing, the use of toxicity big data and deep learning could be a promising tool to screen potential toxicants. Objectives: This study identified potential chemicals related to reproductive and estrogen receptor (ER)-mediated toxicities for 1135 cleaning products and 886 laundry products. Methods: We listed chemicals contained in cleaning and laundry products from a publicly available database. Then, chemicals that potentially exhibited reproductive and ER-mediated toxicities were identified using the European Union Classification, Labeling and Packaging classification and ToxCast database, respectively. For chemicals absent from the ToxCast database, ER activity was predicted using deep learning models. Results: Among the 783 listed chemicals, there were 53 with potential reproductive toxicity and 310 with potential ER-mediated toxicity. Among the 473 chemicals not tested with ToxCast assays, deep learning models indicated that 42 chemicals exhibited ER-mediated toxicity. A total of 13 chemicals were identified as causing reproductive toxicity by reacting with the ER. Conclusions: We demonstrated a screening method to identify potential chemicals related to reproductive and ER-mediated toxicities utilizing chemical toxicity big data and deep learning. Integrating toxicity data from in vivo, in vitro, and deep learning models may contribute to screening chemicals in consumer products.

• Journal of odor and indoor environment
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.362-371
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• 2018

Indoor Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are classified as known or possible toxicants and odorants. This study characterized VOC levels in 11 homes in an area in the capital of Seoul by using two different methods of VOCs sampling, which are the active sampling using a thermal sorption tube and the passive sampling using a diffusion sampler. When using the active sampling method, the total target VOC concentration ranged from 41.7 to $420.7{\mu}g/m^3$ (mean $230.4{\mu}g/m^3$ ; median $221.8{\mu}g/m^3$) during winter and 21.3 to $1,431.9{\mu}g/m^3$ (mean $340.1{\mu}g/m^3$; median $175.4{\mu}g/m^3$) during summer. When using the passive method, 29.6 to $257.5{\mu}g/m^3$ (mean $81.8{\mu}g/m^3$; median $49.4{\mu}g/m^3$) during winter and 1.2 to $5,131.1{\mu}g/m^3$ (mean $1,758.8{\mu}g/m^3$; median $1,375.1{\mu}g/m^3$) during summer. Forty-nine VOCs were quantified and toluene showed the highest concentration regardless of the season and the sampling method studied. The distribution of VOCs was relatively varied by using the active method. However, it showed a low correlation with indoor environmental factors such as room temperature, humidity and ventilation time. The correlation between indoor environmental factors and VOCs were relatively high in the passive method. In particular, these characteristics were confirmed by principal component analysis.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.12-24
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• 2023

Sitophilus oryzae L. (Rice Weevil) is a stored pest of rice that causes extensive loss throughout the world. We tested the leaf powders of 12 plant species viz., Chrysanthemum sp., Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Citrus grandis, Citrus limon, Gliricidia sepium, Gymnema sylvestre, Hemigraphis colorata, Michelia champaca, Moringa oleifera, Murraya koenigii, Polyalthia longifolia, and Sauropus androgynus at dosages of 1.00, 1.50, 2.00 and 3.00g against the adult rice weevil and mortality was recorded at 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 12 and 2l days after treatment (DAT) by direct contact toxicity for their adulticidal effect. We observed 100 percent adult mortality in C. zevlanicum and M. koenigii among the tested leaf powders. In addition, the first-time tested H. colorata and S. androgynus also caused high mortality compared to other plants. All the plant powders caused moderate to high adult mortality. Hence, these plants could be effective botanical insecticides against S. oryzae as they comprise a potential source of bioactive chemicals and are generally free from toxicants. Applications of these natural derivatives in S. oryzae control could reduce the cost of control methods and storage of rice contamination. Therefore, the present study indicates that some plant extracts can be used as an alternative to toxic synthetic chemicals in the management of rice weevils.

• Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.71-76
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• 1998

Exposure to environmental toxicants can cause cellular problems including the interference of DNA repair processes which may lead to the development of cancer. The existence of toxicant-induced DNA repair abnormality was investigated using mice exposed in vivo to genotoxic chemicals and then challenging their exposed lymphocytes in vitro with bleomycin. The repair of bleomycin-induced DNA damage as estimated by the frequency of chromosome aberrations was determined. Our data indicates that the observed aberration frequencies after in vivo exposure to N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitnsoguanidine (MNNG) and in vitro challenge with bleomycin are consistently higher than expected. The enhanced response is not due to the induction of chromosome damage by 25 or 50 mg/kg MNNG since the chemical did not cause chromosome aberrations in lymphocytes of these mice. The observed response after the combined exposure to benzo[a]pyrene (BP) and bleomycin was significantly lower than expected with low in vivo doses of BP (50 mg/kg) and then significantly higher than expected with the high doses (200 mg/kg). We interpret our data to indicate that in vivo exposure to genotoxic agents can cause abnormal DNA repair activities. The response is, however, independent of the clastogenic activities of the inducing chemicals, but dependent upon the inducing agents and on the exposure doses.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.3-12
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• 1980

Certain heavy metals which may lead peoples to poisonous status are widely used in industry and their uses have been increasing along with rapid industrialization of this country. Such an increasement of metal uses aggravates the status of environmental pollution affecting foodstuffs which are the most important life supporting factor of animal and humanbeing. Concerning the safety measures to minimize food-borne transmission of such hazardous metals, surveillance is the backbone of them and probably more so with a potential problem such as intoxication. Theoretically, this surveillance should include the determination of levels of heavy metal toxicants in foods, the determination of food consumption patterns and typical total diet, and the estimation of total load of the metal contaminant from all sources of exposure including air, water, and occupational sources. In recent year, actually, such estimates on the total daily intake of some heavy metals from foods have been made in several developed countries and a wide variation of date by season, locality, and research method was recognized. Also in this country, this kind of research data is vitally needed to make up for the serious shortage or lack of references to estimate the total amount of heavy metal intake of the people. In this study, a modification model for estimation of the total daily intake of cadmium copper, nickel, zinc, and lead through foods was applied and concentrations of the above metals in crops cultivated in this country were measured with atomic absorption spectro photometer to get the following results. 1. Level of heavy metal concentration in crops Generally, the levels of such metals in essential crops such as rice, cucumber, radish. chinese cabbage, apple, pear, grape, and orange are similar or lower than those in Japan and other developed countries. By the way, a striking result on cadmium concentration was increasement of its concentration in rice from $0{\sim}0.035ppm$ in 1970 to 0.11ppm in this study. However, the value is still far below the. Japanese Permissible Lebel of 1.0ppm. 2. Estimation of total daily intake per capita from foods A new model for estimation was devised utilizing levels of metal concentration in foods, amount of food consumed, and other food factors. Based on the above method, the daily intake of cadmium was estimated to be $70.53{\mu}g/man/day$ in average which was as high as the Limit Value of ILO/WHO(up to $71.4{\mu}g/man/day$). Also, 3.89mg of Zinc, 1.65mg of cuppor, 0.32mg of lead were given as the total daily intake per capita by this research. 3. Efficacy of washing or skinning to decrease the amount of metals in crops After washing the crops sufficiently with commercial linear alkylate sulfonate, the concentration of heavy metals could be reduced to $50{\sim}80%$ showing decreasement rate of $20{\sim}50%$. Also, after skinning the fruits, decreasement rate of the heavy metal concentration shelved $0{\sim}50%$.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.284-293
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• 2000

For the artificial removal of air pollutants such as pesticides, environmental toxicants, and pathogenic microorganisms in the greenhouse or the living environment, the accelerated photodegradation and the biocidal effects of some photosensitizers (PS)/photocatalysts (PC) were tested under the sunlight and/or artificial light. The selected photosensitizers/photocatalysts included the semiconductors (PC-1 and PC-2), the oxidizers (PC-3, PC-4, PC-5 and PC-6), the aromatic ketone (PS-7) and the aromatic amine (PS-8). In the case of dichlorvos, all the photocatalysts selected showed more accelerated photodegradation than the control without photocatalysts under both the sunlight and artificial light. Whereas, only the photocatalyst PC-1 accelerated the degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether about 17 times more than the control under both the sunlight and artificial light. Procymidone was much more degraded by the photosensitizer PS-8 and the two photocatalysts (PC-1, PC-6) than by PS-7. In the preliminary experiments to diminish the population of the microorganisms in the air, the photocatalyst PC-1 added to the suspensions of Pseudomonas putida, Phytophthora capsici, and Salmonella typhimurium obviously inhibited the microbial growth under the artificial light. The photocatalyst PC-1 showed a bactericidal activity against Salmonella typhimurium spread on the nutrient broth agar medium. These results suggest that the photosensitizers/photocatalysis under the light can remove some air pollutants and hence they can be used to reduce the exposure of the workers in the horticultural facilities and/or the public in the environment to the harmful pollutants.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.1246-1251
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• 2004

To investigate the effects of plant extracts on the protection against liver damage by $CCl_4$ in rat, two kinds of experiment were performed, firstly by the primary hepatocyte culture and secondly by the animal feeding. The primary hepatocyte culture with the extracts of pine leaf, soybean sprout and mugwort showed significantly low activities (p<0.01∼0.05) of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT), indicating an excellent protective effect against liver damage by $CCl_4$. In the second experiment, the microsomal malondialdehyde (MDA) contents of the above same groups were also significantly lower (p<0.01) than the $CCl_4$-treated group without plant extracts, but shiitake showed less effect. Among four kinds of plant extracts, extracts of pine leaf and mugwort showed also much higher activities of the microsomal cytochrome P-450 in comparison to soybean sprout and shiitake. In the test of xanthine oxidase (XOD) activity, all of three groups except shiitake showed significantly low activities (p<0.01). These consistent results in vitro and in vivo suggest that the extracts of pine leaf, soybean sprout and mugwort may have strong protective effects against liver damage induced by the potential toxicants such as $CCl_4$.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.7-13
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• 2016

As of many organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls are ubiquitous organic contaminants, which can be found in the most environmental matrices. Their toxic effects include endocrinedisrupting activity. Most researches with these toxicants performed with mixtures of congeners, namely Aroclor and related study has been done in complex environmental matrix, rather than single biosystems or pure congeners. 5 congeners were synthesized and their fates in pure microbial culture (Aspergillus niger) were determined in this study. Among biphenyl and synthetic congeners, biphenyl, PCB-1 (2-chlorobiphenyl), and PCB-3 (4-chlorobiphenyl) were rapidly transformed to hydrophilic metabolites, followed by PCB-38 (3,4,5-trichlorobiphenyl), while the degradation of PCB-126 (3,3',4,4',5-pentachlorobiphenyl) was not observed. The amounts of transformation for biphenyl, PCB-1, PCB-3, and PCB-38 were 65, 38, 52, and 2% respectively. The major metabolites of the above congeners were identified as mono- and di-hydroxy biphenyls, which are known to give adverse endocrinological effects.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.203-210
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• 2016

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are ubiquitous environmental contaminants, found in the many environments. PCBs exerts various toxicological effects, including endocrine-disrupting activity. Most researches with these toxicants performed with soil matrix with mixtures of congeners, namely Aroclor, while the biological activities have been tested with animals. However, studies with pure congeners are limited. In this study, 5 congeners were synthesized and their fates (bioaccumulation, degradation, kinetics) were studied in carrot-soil system. The soil half-lives of biphenyl, PCB-1, PCB-3, PCB-77, and PCB-126 were 20.2, 16.0, 11.6, 46.5, 198.0 days, respectively. In general, the longer half-lives were observed with the higher hydrophoicity of PCBs. Times, required for maxium accumulation of PCBs in carrot (Tmax) were 10-20 days for most congeners and the concentrations were 0.4-2.6 mg/kg. The concentrations of PCBs in carrot were kept as constant after Tmax, except PCB-126. The concentration ratio between carrot and soil after 90 days of treatment were 1.7, 8.1, 1.9, 1.8, and 5.9 for biphenyl, PCB-1, PCB-3, PCB-77, and PCB-126. Because of the increase of biomass, the total residual amount of PCBs in carrots however, increased till the end of experiment. The portions of PCB-126 in carrot were 1.1% of the soil residues at 90 days after planting.

• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.58-64
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• 2004

The current study was performed to clarify the pupation disorder symptoms in silkworm which herbicide, molinate has been regarded as a causal origin. Molinate residues in mulberry leaves was monitored in major rearing area of silkworm; Yeacheon, Sangju and Namwon. Detected range of the molinate in mulberry leaves was 0.002 to 0.013 mg/kg and detection frequency was 30.0 to 81.8%. Molinate concentration in the air of mulberry tree growing area was $0.004\;{\mu}g/m^3$. Water diluted solution of molinate at the concentration of 1, 10, 100 mg/l gave no abnormal symptoms in silkworm irrespective of spraying to silkworm or spiking to diet. Exposing the silkworm to the air containing 250, 2,500, and $10,000\;{\mu}g/m^3$ also revealed no abnormal symptom. These results illustrated that the abnormal growth of silkworm encountered in the field was not caused by pesticide contamination.