National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

“ There are very few biological monitoring studies of triazines and their metabolites found in the literature on which to develop a good reference range. And to our knowledge there have been no studies or reports on levels of these analytes in the general population. 1. Catenacci (1990) looking at parent atrazine in the urine found maximum excretion rates of 0.14 - 0.42 nmol/hr in workers at an atrazine manufacturing plant and very poor correlation between the concentration in the urine and the concentration in the air. ”

“ Assessment of human exposure to atrazine throu gh the de term ination of free atra zine in urine. Bull. Enviro n. Conta m . Toxicol. 44: 1-7. [2] Catenacci G, Barbieri F, Bersani M, Ferioli A, Cottica D,Maroni M [1993] . Biological monitoring of human exposure to atrazine. Toxicology Letters 69: 217-222.
NIOSH Manual of Analytical Methods (NMAM) , Fourth Edition TRIAZINE HERBICIDES and THEIR METABOLITES: METHOD 8315, Issue 1, dated 15 March 2003 - page 6 of 6 [3] Ikonen R, Kangas J, Savolainen H [1988] . Urinary atrazine metabolites as indicators for rat and human exposure to atrazine. ”

“ Fo r exam ple, de-alkylation of the isopropyl group on a trazine and c yanazine both give des isopropylatra zine, wh ich can a lso be form ed b y the de -alkylation of o ne o f the ethyl groups o f sim azine. Unless exposure is very high the parent compounds are not found in the urine, leaving the analyst with no way of know ing which parent the m etabolite came from in the case of a m ixed expos ure which is very comm on in herbicide applicators. The metabolites and any parent compounds found can be summ ed and reported as total triazine level if desired. ”