Assessing hazardous risks of human exposure to temple airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Abstract

We proposed an integrated probabilistic risk assessment framework based on reported data to quantify human health risks of temple goers/workers to airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from incense burning in typical Taiwanese temples. The framework probabilistically integrates exposure, human respiratory tract, and incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILCR) models to quantitatively estimate size-dependent PAHs exposure in human lung regions and cancer risks for temple goers (moderate and high exposures) and temple workers (extreme exposure). Our results show that the ILCRs are greater than the acceptable level of 10 −6 for extreme and high exposure groups through inhalation route. The result also indicates that the higher ILCRs (10 −6 to 10 −4) are found in ingestion and dermal contact routes for temple goers/workers. For personal extreme exposure to carcinogenic PAH in the temple, 95% probability total ILCR (TILCR) (9.87 × 10 −4 to 1.13 × 10 −3) is much greater than the range of 10 −6 to 10 −4, indicating high potential health risk to temple workers. For temple goers with high and moderate exposure groups, however, the 95% probability TILCRs were estimated from 6.44 × 10 −5 to 7.50 × 10 −5 and 5.75 × 10 −6 to 6.99 × 10 −6, respectively. This study successfully offers a scientific basis for risk analysis due to incense burning to enhance broad risk management strategies for temple indoor air quality.