Exposure Characteristics and Cumulative Risk Assessment for Phthalates in Children Living near a Petrochemical Complex

Chih-Wen Wang; Po-Keng Cheng; Vinoth Kumar Ponnusamy; Hung-Che Chiang; Wan-Ting Chang; Po-Chin Huang

doi:10.3390/toxics11010057

Exposure Characteristics and Cumulative Risk Assessment for Phthalates in Children Living near a Petrochemical Complex

Toxics. 2023 Jan 6;11(1):57. doi: 10.3390/toxics11010057.

Authors

Chih-Wen Wang^{1

2

3}, Po-Keng Cheng⁴, Vinoth Kumar Ponnusamy^{3

5}, Hung-Che Chiang⁶, Wan-Ting Chang⁷, Po-Chin Huang^{3

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Hepatobiliary, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 701, Taiwan.
² Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Municipal Siaogang Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 701, Taiwan.
³ Research Center for Precision Environmental Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 701, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Finance and Cooperative Management, National Taipei University, New Taipei City 237, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Medicinal and Applied Chemistry, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Medical Research, China Medical University Hospital, China Medical University, Taichung 404, Taiwan.
⁷ National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli 350, Taiwan.

Abstract

Background: School-aged children living near plastics-producing factories may have higher risk of exposure to phthalates released during the manufacturing processes.

Objectives: We aimed to investigate the urinary concentrations of phthalate metabolites in school-aged children living near a petrochemical complex and estimate the cumulative risk of phthalate exposure.

Methods: We used a well-established cohort (Taiwan Petrochemical Complex Cohort for Children, TPE3C) of school-aged children (6-13 years old) living near polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) factories in central Taiwan from October 2013 to September 2014. A total of 257 children were included from five elementary schools: Syu-Cuo Branch (n = 58, school A, ~0.9 km), Feng-An (n = 40, school B, ~2.7 km), Ciao-Tou (n = 58, school C, ~5.5 km), Mai-Liao (n = 37, school D, ~6.9 km), and Lung-Feng (n = 57, school E, ~8.6 km). We analyzed 11 metabolites of seven phthalates (including di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) and di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP)) in urine. Daily intakes (DIs) were compared with acceptable intake levels to calculate the hazard quotient (HQ) for individual phthalates, and the cumulative risk for each child was assessed using a hazard index (HI), which was the sum of the the individual HQs.

Results: The geometric mean and proportion of participants with HIs exceeding one for hepatic (HI_hep) and reproductive (HI_rep) effects were 0.33 (13.2%) and 0.24 (7.8%), respectively. The major contributors to phthalate exposure risk were DEHP, di-iso-butyl phthalate (DiBP) and DnBP in all children. Moreover, we observed a U shaped distribution of DEHP exposure by school distance from the PVC and VCM factories (school A: 7.48 μg/kg/day and school E: 80.44 μg/kg/day). This may be due to emissions (closest) and and being located downwind of PVC scrap incineration (farthest).

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that children living near a petrochemical complex were at a greater risk of phthalate exposure than normal school-aged children and that phthalate exposure was mainly attributed to DEHP, DiBP and DnBP. In addition, inhalation may have been a risk factor for people living near to PVC and VCM factories.

Keywords: daily intakes; hazard index; hazard quotient; petrochemical complex; phthalate metabolites.

Abstract

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