Hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyls in human sera from adolescents and their mothers living in two U.S. Midwestern communities

• Fifty-eight OH-PCBs were assessed in serum of 85 adolescents and 74 their mothers.
• Lower-chlorinated OH-PCBs were rarely detected in serum.
• Mothers had significantly higher total OH-PCB concentrations than their children.
• 4-OH-PCB 107 and 4-OH-PCB 187 changed significantly within subject across 3 years.
• OH-PCBs did not differ between subjects from the urban vs. the rural community.

Hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyls (OH-PCBs) have been detected in human specimens and some are suspected as being more toxic than their parent compounds. We compared 58 OH-PCB congeners (in 51 chromatographic peaks) in serum samples from participants in the AESOP Study, a longitudinal cohort study of adolescents and their mothers living in urban and rural areas in the United States. We hypothesized that adolescents would have lower levels of OH-PCBs than their mothers and that serum concentration of OH-PCBs would be stable over a 3-year period. We found statistically significant differences in total OH-PCBs between age groups in both East Chicago (p = 0.001) and Columbus Junction (p < 0.001), with adolescents having lower concentrations than their mothers. We observed that lower-chlorinated OH-PCBs were rarely detected, suggesting that they are not retained in serum and/or rapidly biotransformed into other forms. Twelve OH-PCBs, including several that are rarely reported (4,4′-diOH-PCB 202, 4′–OH–PCB 208, and 4-OH-PCB 163) were detected in over 60% of participants. Lastly, from repeated measures within subject serum for three OH-PCBs, concentrations of 4-OH-PCB 107 and 4-OH-PCB 187 changed significantly over three years of the study.