Unveiling a Large Fraction of Masked Tire Additives in Roadside Plants: Field Evidence for Gastrointestinal Digestion-Driven Dietary Risks

gastrointestinal model, we demonstrated that these conjugates were efficiently converted back to parent compounds during digestion, greatly increasing the concentrations of 16 persistent TAs by 2.7-22.3-fold and enabling the detection of the 4 previously undetected TAs. Gastric acidity and intestinal enzymes promoted the deconjugation of TA conjugates during gastrointestinal digestion, significantly elevating the bioaccessibility of plant-sourced TAs and the associated dietary risks. Our findings uncover the prevalence of conjugated TAs in field vegetation impacted by vehicular traffic, underscoring the critical need to incorporate plant conjugation and digestive deconjugation into future risk assessment frameworks.