Publications by authors named "A Ballesteros-Gomez"

Article Synopsis
  • - This study explores the levels and geographical differences of contaminants found in house dust across Europe, identifying over 1200 anthropogenic compounds using advanced techniques like mass spectrometry and suspect screening.
  • - The research indicates that contaminant concentrations vary less than threefold within Europe, showing similarities with North American dust due to shared consumer products and materials.
  • - It highlights geographical patterns, revealing that certain contaminants increased from north to south (like PAHs and chlorinated paraffins), whereas others, like biocides, decreased; it also emphasizes a significant risk from older, restricted contaminants, like DEHP and PCBs, despite limited toxicity data available for newer compounds.
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The characterization of the human chemical exposome through daily estimated intakes or biomonitoring has become paramount to understand the causal pathways leading to common diseases. The paradigm shift that has taken place in looking at health has moved research from the classical biomedical model based on "one exposure, one disease" to a more comprehensive approach based on multiple chemicals and low dose effects. For this purpose, untargeted and/or suspect analysis of chemicals based on liquid chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) has been proposed as the most relevant strategy for sequencing the exposome.

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In this study supramolecular solvents (SUPRAS) are employed for the first time to perform a wide screening of organic compounds in indoor dust samples. The potential of SUPRAS to efficiently extract a wide polarity range of compounds, and to simplify and improve the green properties of sample treatment in this area are discussed. SUPRAS made up of inverse aggregates of hexanol in tetrahydrofuran:water mixtures, which have been previously and successfully applied to the target determination of a variety of organic contaminants in different environmental matrices, were employed.

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Per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances (PFAS) are a large group of toxic compounds which have been widely used in industrial and consumer applications, from where they can migrate into the environment. They can pose a risk to human health because they have been associated with several diseases. To obtain more information on the risk of PFAS in fast food packaging materials, several PFAS (perfluorocarboxylic acids or PFCAs (n = 16), perfluorosulfonic acids or PFSAs (n = 14), and a miscellaneous group constituted by sulfonamides (n = 5) and fluorotelomer phosphate esters or PAPs (n = 5)) were quantified in food contact materials (FCMs) from fast-food restaurants in France.

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Multiclass screening methods involving hundreds of structurally unrelated compounds are becoming essential in many control labs and research areas. Accurate mass screening of a theoretically unlimited number of chemicals can be undertaken using liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LCHRMS), but the lack of comprehensive sample treatments hinders this unlimited potential. In this research, the capability of supramolecular solvents (SUPRAS) for making comprehensive liquid-liquid microextraction (LLME) in multiclass screening methods based on LCHRMS was firstly explored.

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