Plasticizers are added to diverse consumer products including children’s products. Owing to their potential for endocrine disruption, the use of phthalate plasticizers is restricted in many children’s products. In this study, exposure to five phthalate esters (dibutylphthalate, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), diethyl phthalate, di-isobutyl phthalate, and diisononyl phthalate (DINP)) and an alternative (di-ethylhexyl adipate) was assessed by the use of children’s products based on chemical analysis of 3345 products purchased during 2017 and 2019 in Korea. Plasticizers were found above the detection limits in 387 products, and DEHP and DINP were the two most predominantly detected plasticizers. Deterministic and probabilistic estimation of the margin of exposure at a screening level revealed that the use of children’s products might be an important risk factor. However, it is also highly likely that the exposure could be overestimated, because the migration rate was estimated based solely on the content of plasticizers in children’s products. Chemical migration is a key process determining the absorption of plasticizers from products; thus, further refinements in experimental determination or model estimation of the migration rate are required.

The unified bioaccessibility research group of Europe (BARGE) method (UBM) suggests using in vitro experimental conditions for simulating the release of chemicals from confined matrices, such as soils and sediments, in the human gastrointestinal tract. It contains comprehensive steps that simulate human digestion pathways and has good potential for application in the leaching of plastic additives from accidentally ingested plastic particles. However, its complexity could be a challenge for routine screening assessments of the migration of chemicals from consumer plastic products. In this study, the UBM was modified to assess the migration of plastic additives from consumer products with five model phthalate esters (i.e., dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), and di-n-octyl phthalate (DNOP)) from polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The migration of phthalate esters was observed in four digestive phases (saliva, gastric, duodenal, and bile). Three separate experiments were conducted with the addition of (1) inorganic constituents only, (2) inorganic and organic constituents, and (3) inorganic and organic constituents in combination with digestive enzymes. While using enzymes with the UBM solution, the migrated mass for leached compounds was comparatively low (0.226 ± 0.04 μg) in most digestion phases, likely due to a self-generated coating of enzymes on the plastic materials. However, higher mass migration (0.301 ± 0.05) was observed when phthalate esters were analyzed in the UBM solution, excluding the enzymes. A ring test among six independent laboratories confirmed the robustness of the modified method. Therefore, we propose a simplified version of the original UBM designed mainly for the migration of inorganic elements using only the inorganic and organic components of the solution throughout all phases of digestion.

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