Wristband Personal Passive Samplers and Suspect Screening Methods Highlight Gender Disparities in Chemical Exposures

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Analytical Chemistry
• Toxicology

Background:

• Wristband personal samplers provide scalable and cost-effective human exposure assessments.
• Nontargeted analyses with wristbands expand understanding of the environmental exposome.

Purpose of the Study:

• Develop and validate a custom R workflow for suspect screening and chemical annotation of wristband samples.
• Utilize gas chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) for comprehensive exposure monitoring.

Main Methods:

• A scripted workflow in R was developed for feature selection and chemical annotation.
• Methods included blank subtraction, internal standard normalization, and PubChem metadata utilization.
• Workflow validation against 104 targeted analytes from previous wristband studies.

Main Results:

• Achieved a true positive rate of 62% in QC matrix and 48% in wristband samples.
• Identified 458 features significantly higher in female-worn wristbands versus 21 in male-worn wristbands.
• Tentative identifications suggest personal care products drive observed sex-based exposure differences.

Conclusions:

• The developed R workflow effectively annotates chemical features from wristband samples.
• Significant differences in chemical exposures exist between sexes, primarily linked to personal care products.
• Wristband sampling combined with advanced analytical workflows offers powerful insights into the human exposome.