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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2014 Oct 10;19:134–144. doi: 10.1016/j.coph.2014.09.020

Figure 1.

Figure 1

There are 209 different congeners of PCBs, and numbers and locations of chlorine atoms dictate structure and mechanism of action, as described above. Many studies use industrial mixtures of ~50 PCBs, called Aroclors. The degree of chlorination is indicated by the last two digits in each Aroclor name; for example; A1254 is 54% chlorine, with an average of 5 chlorines per molecules. Given that many of the receptor targets interact and that congeners (and their metabolites) exist in the environment in mixes, the physiological and behavioral outcomes of PCB exposure are always composites of multiple mechanisms interacting.