Water disinfection processes play an essential role in protecting public health. The addition of disinfectants, such as chlorine and chloramine, prevent pathogen regrowth in water distribution systems. Nevertheless, disinfectants can react with organic matter to produce disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which pose several deleterious health effects. Accordingly, the U.S. EPA has established regulations for 11 DBPs. Nevertheless, growing evidence suggests that regulated DBPs account for less than two percent of total DBPs. Further, unregulated DBPs, such as haloacetonitriles (HANs), are more toxic than many regulated DBPs. To assess DBP toxicity, cell- and animal-based assays are traditionally employed. Nevertheless, these models do not fully capture human complexities. To determine the health implications of DBP exposure, this study involves creating a human-species specific model for investigating chemical fate and biotransformation post-ingestion. The primary objective of this study is to determine fate of four HANs in a simulated human gut culture. As a first step, we will seed small (ca. 25 mL) continuous flow, anaerobic culture chambers with human fecal specimens and then add known HAN concentrations. We will employ liquid-liquid-extraction and GC-EI-MS to quantify HAN concentrations in culture. We hypothesized that matrix interferences may result in signal inhibition. We will report on the method’s performance in complex biomatrices. We expect the results to indicate that sample preparation strategies can control matrix effects and allow analyte detection at low levels. The results of this study will provide a novel analytical technique for identifying underlying mechanisms for toxic effects following DBP exposure.
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