Fate of estrogenic compounds in agricultural soils and development of an immunoassay for their environmental detection

• Main Author: Caron, Emmanuelle
• Other Authors: Farenhorst, Annemieke (Soil Science) Sheedy, Claudia (Soil Science)
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: estrogen; immunoassay; sorption; mineralization
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4730

Estrogens produced by livestock can be released into soils when their manure is spread onto agricultural land. This is the first study to determine the sorption of a range of estrogens in a wide range of soils at the regional scale, including the sorption of the phytoestrogen equol which had never been previously studied. Sorption increased in the order of 17β-estradiol=estriol <estrone<equol in surface soils collected from 41 agricultural fields in Alberta and was significantly positively correlated with soil organic carbon content (SOC) for all estrogens. 17β-estradiol was further investigated and its mineralization in non-amended and manure-amended soils never exceeded 30% at 90 days, which suggest that even under optimum environmental conditions for mineralization, 17β-estradiol or its metabolites estrone and/or estriol appear to have a relatively long persistence in Alberta soils. Maximum 17β-estradiol mineralization was significantly positively correlated with sorption and hence increased in soils with greater SOC such as those used in this study with a long-term history of solid beef manure applications. Two ELISAs were developed using rabbit polyclonal antibodies for future field experiments and environmental monitoring. Of these, a developed 17β-estradiol+estrone+estriol ELISA could detect estriol in water from an edge of field experiment at concentrations as low as 1 ng mL-1.