Is House Dust the Missing Exposure Pathway for PBDEs? An Analysis of the Urban Fate and Human Exposure to PBDEs

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• 作者：Heather A. Jones-Otazo ; John P. Clarke ; Miriam L. Diamond ; Josephine A. Archbold ; Glenn Ferguson ; Tom Harner ; G. Mark Richardson ; John Jake Ryan ; and Bryony Wilford
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2005
• 出版时间：July 15, 2005
• 年：2005
• 卷：39
• 期：14
• 页码：5121 - 5130
• 全文大小：222K
• 年卷期：v.39,no.14(July 15, 2005)
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) body burdens inNorth America are 20 times that of Europeans and some"high accumulation" individuals have burdens up to 1-2orders of magnitude higher than median values, the reasonsfor which are not known. We estimated emissions andfate of mages/gifchars/Sigma.gif" BORDER=0 >PBDEs (minus BDE-209) in a 470 km² area of Toronto,Canada, using the Multi-media Urban Model (MUM-Fate). Using a combination of measured and modeledconcentrations for indoor and outdoor air, soil, and dustplus measured concentrations in food, we estimated exposureto mages/gifchars/Sigma.gif" BORDER=0 >PBDEs via soil, dust, and dietary ingestion andindoor and outdoor inhalation pathways. Fate calculationsindicate that 57-85% of PBDE emissions to the outdoorenvironment originate from within Toronto and thatthe dominant removal process is advection by air todownwind locations. Inadvertent ingestion of house dustis the largest contributor to exposure of toddlers through toadults and is thus the main exposure pathway for all lifestages other than the infant, including the nursing mother,who transfers PBDEs to her infant via human milk. Thenext major exposure pathway is dietary ingestion of animaland dairy products. Infant consumption of human milk isthe largest contributor to lifetime exposure. Inadvertentingestion of dust is the main exposure pathway for a scenarioof occupational exposure in a computer recycling facilityand a fish eater. Ingestion of dust can lead to almost 100-fold higher exposure than "average" for a toddler with ahigh dust intake rate living in a home in which PBDEconcentrations are elevated.