Publications by authors named "Christina Schmalz"

Background: Swimming in pools is a healthy activity that entails exposure to disinfection by-products (DBPs), some of which are irritant and genotoxic.

Objectives: We evaluated exposure to DBPs during swimming in a chlorinated pool and the association with short-term changes in genotoxicity and lung epithelium permeability biomarkers.

Methods: Non-smoker adults (N = 116) swimming 40 min in an indoor pool were included.

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Sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) is the most commonly used disinfectant in pool treatment system. Outdoor pools usually suffer from the strong sunlight irradiation which degrades the free chlorine rapidly. In addition, more pools start to adopt the recirculation of swimming pool water, which intensifies the disinfection by-product (DBP) accumulation issue.

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Background: Trihalomethanes (THMs) in exhaled breath and trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) in urine are internal dose biomarkers of exposure to disinfection by-products (DBPs) in swimming pools.

Objective: We assessed how these biomarkers reflect the levels of a battery of DBPs in pool water and trichloramine in air, and evaluated personal determinants.

Methods: A total of 116 adults swam during 40min in a chlorinated indoor pool.

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Challenging tasks, increasing demands, and new generations of powerful analytical instruments initiated considerable progress in aquatic environmental analysis and led to a considerable improvement of analytical performance during the last few years. The ever growing number of emerging pollutants is tackled by specific and highly sensitive analytical methods with detection limits of a few nanogram per liter and even lower. Wide-scope monitoring techniques and multiclass and multiresidue analysis allow for the simultaneous determination of hundreds of compounds.

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Trichloramine is a volatile, irritant compound of penetrating odor, which is found as a disinfection by-product in the air of chlorinated indoor swimming pools from reactions of nitrogenous compounds with chlorine. Acid amides, especially urea, ammonium ions and α-amino acids have been found as most efficient trichloramine precursors at acidic and neutral pH. For urea a relative NCl(3) formation of 96% at pH 2.

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