Plastic additives and personal care products in south China house dust and exposure in child-mother pairs.

Abstract

Indoor environment constitutes an important source of industrial additive chemicals to human exposure. We hypothesized that the influence of residential environment on human exposure varies among different types of additive chemicals and differs between children and mothers. This study determined a suite of additive chemicals in house dust from South China dwellings (n=47) and urine from child-mother pairs. Concentrations of phthalates (PAEs; median 601μg/g) were 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than those of parabens (0.82μg/g), bisphenols (3.31μg/g), and benzophenone-related chemicals (2.69μg/g). Urinary concentrations differed between children and mothers, but the pattern of differences varied between chemical groups. Children exhibited greater urinary levels of mono-PAEs than mothers (510 versus 395ng/mL, p=0.152), while the latter population exhibited greater levels of parabens and benzophenones. Regression analyses indicate a lack of association between dust and urinary levels for most chemicals, suggesting that other exposure pathways can complicate human exposure scenarios. Indeed, we estimated that the daily intake via dust ingestion only constituted 0.002-0.81% of total daily intake estimated based on urine data for mothers and 0.04-5.61% for children. Future efforts are needed to better characterize source-specific exposure for different populations.