Edinburgh Napier University

  Endocrine disruptors are chemicals widely used worldwide by industries in a variety of applications. Routinely exposure to these chemicals, even if at low doses, can cause damage effects on human health. In the present study we evaluated toxic effects of nine chemicals, among which phthalates, using various cell lines to investigate their capability to interfere with cell proliferation and viability.Alongside, we investigated their affinity for phospholipids to assess the possible passage through biomembranes. Experimentally determined logkwIAM.MG values ranged from 1.37 to 3.49 whilst calculated log kwIAM.DD2 spanned from 1.80 to 5.21, supporting the target contaminants to exhibit lipophilicity to moderate to very high. The achieved results were related to pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties by ADMET predictor™ and EPI Suite™ software. Triclosan and 4-Nonylphenol were found to be the most toxic against all cell lines screened, showing an IC50 of 30 µM for triclosan on human keratinocytes and of 50 µM for 4-Nonylphenol on human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells. Overall, even if the phthalates showed higher IC50 values (ranging from 170 µM to 280 µM), we can assert that all contaminants herein tested were able to interfere with cell growth and viability.