POSSIBILITY OF ENHANCING REMOVAL OF HYDROPHOBIC
ORGANOCHLORO-COMPOUNDS
FROM THE HUMAN BODY BY AQUATHERAPY
Kazuo Amaya
Department of Engineering,Gunma Univeresity
3-15-4 Okusawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 158 Japan
Recently, organochloro-compounds such as dioxins and trihalomethane are threatening
our daily lives and we have to solve these problems in sustainable way, that is with least materials and
energy. It is said that there is remedy for diseases caused by dioxins, except taking chlorella and a kind of blue-green algae as food, by slowly removing these compounds from the body. We
have been working on "activated water", which is produced by passing ordinary tap water through a column packed with a number of small ceramic balls called "BRC22".
This water shows different physical, chemical, and biological behaviours from that of ordinary water and we
noticed recently that it might be possible to make use of this water instead of the above-mentioned impracticable remedy.
At first we attempted to make use of higher solubility of hydrophobic substances in ceramic treated water
then in ordinary-water. Relative solubility ratios for oxygen, toluene, xylene, oleicacid, and anthracene are 1.27, 1.22, 1.55, 1.30, and 1.17 respectively. These relative solubility values
were determined by pyrogallol olorimetry for oxygen, by UV absorption-method for toluene, xylene and oleicacid and fluorescence-method for anthracene respectively. Increase of solubility is
not so large, but it is expected that washing out of hydrophobic organochloro-compounds accumulated in liver and fat in the body is enhanced by drinking this ceramic treated water
daily, and these compounds are removed slowly through discharge of urine. In order to confirm the above-mentioned higher solubility of ceramic treated water for organochloro-compounds and
also to develop easy and inexpensive methods of detecting and rough estimation of very small-amount of dioxins and other organochloro-compounds for screening test, we deviced the following
methods.
Organochloro-compound is decomposed to form inorganic chloride ion by photolysis or by chemical reagents and
the quantity of chloride ions formed is determined by measuring increment of electric conductivity when the medium has low electric conductivity. When it has high electric conductivity it is
electrolysed by silver electrodes, and silver chloride formed is measured by turbidimetry. Detectability of these methods are an order of 10-10 mol/ml. Hexachlorocyclohexane, as a model compound of organochloro-compounds is
dissolved in xylene and this solution is shaken with water and equilibrium concentration in water phase is determined by the above-mentioned method. Ratio of
this value for ceramic treated water and untreated water was calculated. We got a value
of 1.16, greater than 1, as we expected.
In a course of experiments we found unexpectedly that organochloro-compound such as chloroform and hexachlorocyclohexane dissolved in water were decomposed and chloride ions were formed
without photolysis or addition of chemical reagents, if ceramic ball was added in water. At present mechanism of these chemical decomposition is not elucidated yet and it is not clear whether
similar reactions occur for dioxins. A model experiment using non-toxic aromatic chloro-compounds is needed. If we assume that organochloro-compounds in animals are partly decomposed in a
similar way mentioned above, solubility of the fragments of original compounds, devoid of chlorine atom, may be different from that of the original compounds. Usually in aqueous medium
chlorine atoms are replaced by hydroxy group and the fragment molecule may become hydrophilic and much more soluble in water. Then removal of these compound become more effective compared
with the former attempt.
Beside the problems of removing toxic substances from the human body, we have to consider various ways of
moderating various kinds of physiological and pathological effects of these. substances to the human body. The one is disturbance to hormonal functions and the other is carcinogenicity. These
problems are related to molecular interaction between DNA and these compounds. Physiological effects of dioxins are related to probability of this attaching this molecule to hormonal site of
DNA molecules This value is a function of dioxin concentration and complexation energy between the two molecules. If complexation energy is changed favourably to supress its influence it is
equivalent to the decrease of dioxin concentration. Removal of dioxin molecules from the body takes long time but complexation energy is immediately changed by replacing the cell medium. In
order to elucidate this point, we made a preliminary experiment using acridine as a model molecule. Interaction between the two molecules was monitored by fluorescence from acridine. It is
confirmed that complexation energy is changed by replacing the medium from ordinary water with ceramic treated water through change of intensity of fluorescence, though
qualitative at present. Carcinogenesis by chemical mutagenic substances are closely related to interaction between DNA and Mutagenic molecules similar to hormonal functions, though its effect
comes out very lately.
Fundamental as well as applied researches are needed to overcome dioxins menace to our lives.
