Establishment of compound database of emerging antioxidants and high-resolution mass spectrometry screening in lake sediment from Taihu Lake Basin, China.

Antioxidants are ubiquitous in various environmental samples, leading to increasing concern regarding their potential risk to environments or humans. However, there is dearth of information regarding the environmental fate of antioxidants and unknown/unexpected antioxidants in the environment. Here, we established a compound database (CDB) containing 320 current-used antioxidants by collecting the chemicals from EPA's functional use database and published documents. Physical-chemical characteristics of these antioxidants were estimated, and 19 ones were considered as persistent and bioaccumulative (P&B) substances. This CDB was further coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) technique, which was employed for suspect screening of antioxidants in extracts of sediments (n = 88) collected from Taihu Lake basin. We screened 119 HRMS features that can match 135 chemical formulas in the CDB, and 20 out of them exhibited the detection frequencies ≥ 90%. The total concentrations of suspect antioxidants in sediments ranged from 6.41 to 830 ng/g dw. Statistical analysis demonstrated that concentrations of suspect antioxidants in Taihu Lake were statistically significantly lower than those in Shihu and Jiulihu Lake, but greater than those from other small lakes. Collectively, this study provided a CDB that could be helpful for further monitoring studies of antioxidant in the environments, and also provided the first evidence regarding the ubiquity of antioxidants in aquatic environment of Taihu Lake basin.