A novel method for predicting the emergence of toxicity interaction in ternary mixtures

The environment is teeming with a wide variety of pollutants, but the complexity and diversity of their combinations make it difficult to fully assess their toxicity interaction. A novel toxicity interaction prediction method (TIPM) based on the three-dimensional (3D) surface form of the concentration addition (CA) deviation model (dCA) was proposed to predict the emergence of toxicity interaction in ternary mixtures. Doxycycline hyclate (DH), bromoacetic acid (BAA) and iodoacetic acid (IAA) were used as target pollutants. The toxicity of binary and ternary mixtures designed by the direct equipartition ray design method (EquRay) and the uniform design ray method (UD-Ray) against Escherichia coli (E. coli) was determined by using a time-dependent microplate toxicity analysis (t-MTA) method. The toxicity interaction within mixtures was characterized qualitatively and quantitatively using dCA 3D surface modeling and the emergence of DH-MAA-IAA toxicity interaction was predicted by TIPM. The results showed that the dCA 3D surface model could well characterize the toxicity interactions of the mixtures, and toxicity interaction was closely related to the components' concentration ratio (p_i). TIPM could predict the emergence of DH-MAA-IAA toxicity interactions well based on the relationship. Due the model is only related to the toxicity interactions and p_i value of a mixture, so it can be suggested to predict toxicity interaction within the more complex multicomponent mixtures, which provides a novel approach for the environmental risk assessment and prediction of hazardous substances.