RI-URBANS launches the intercomparison of oxidative potential protocols

The objective is to harmonise the measurements of most health relevant oxidative potential protocols and evaluate their potential to assess toxicological effects of PM10 and PM2.5
A total of 18 groups from Europe, the USA and Canada participate in the evaluation.

RI-URBANS has launched the intercomparison of protocols for most health relevant oxidative potential assays among various research groups to harmonise its measurements. The objective is to evaluate if oxidative potential can be an additional metric to assess potential toxicological effects of PM10 and PM2.5, in relation to particulate matter components and their source contributions.

It’s a first harmonization step needed to properly assess the relevance of oxidative potential to human health

explains the french researcher Gaelle Uzu, leader of the task (CNRS/IRD).

There are several available methodologies of oxidative potential (dithiothreitol, ascorbic acid, glutathione, among others), but they do not always correlate well with each other, as they are driven by different oxidizing species, as are our different lung anti-oxidant categories.
In this protocol, the measurements will be intercompared for the most common oxidative potential assay.
To accomplish this task, Gaëlle Uzu’s team has sent the samples and reactants to the participating groups today. From the data of receipt, the results can be sent back within one month to avoid ageing processes.
The intercomparison of oxidative potential relies on :

• Simplified oxidative potential dithiothreitol protocol for everyone + all home protocols allowed
• A total of 4 samples will be tested in triplicate (reference compounds and atmospheric particulate matter)
• 18 research groups are participating : 13 groups are from the EU region (Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK) ; 3 from the USA ; and 2 from Canada

Anonymous and authoritative data treatment will be done by the Joint Research Center (JRC) at spring, and it is estimated that results will be released in September 2023.

Contacts : Gaëlle Uzu and Pamela Dominutti
January 17th, 2023.