Following regulations on legacy plasticizers, a large
variety of
industrial chemicals have been employed as substitutes to manufacture
consumer products. However, knowledge remains limited on their environmental
distributions, fate, and human exposure risks. In the present work,
we screened for a total of 34 emerging plasticizers in house dust
from South China and matched hand wipes collected from volunteers
(n = 49 pairs). The results revealed a frequent detection
of 27 emerging plasticizers in house dust, with the total concentrations
reaching a median level of 106 700 ng/g. Thirteen of them had
never been investigated by any environmental studies prior to our
work, which included glycerol monooleate (median: 61 600 ng/g),
methyl oleate (16 400 ng/g), butyl oleate (411 ng/g), 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol
monoisobutyrate (341 ng/g), 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol diisobutyrate
(105 ng/g), isopropyl myristate (154 ng/g), di(2-ethylhexyl) sebacate
(69.1 ng/g), triisononyl trimellitate (64.4 ng/g), as well as a few
others. Emerging plasticizers were also frequently detected in hand
wipes, with a median total level of 4680 ng, indicating potential
exposure via hand-to-mouth contact. Several chemicals, including acetyl
tributyl citrate, tributyl citrate, di-n-butyl maleate,
isopropyl myristate, and isopropyl palmitate, exhibited significant
correlations between dust and hand wipe. However, other plasticizers
did not follow this pattern, and the chemical compositional profiles
differed between dust and hand wipe, suggesting chemical-specific
sources and exposure pathways. Although the estimation of daily intake
(EDI) indicated no substantial risks through dust ingestion or hand-to-mouth
transfer of emerging plasticizers, continuous monitoring is needed
to explore whether some of the important plasticizers are safe replacements
or regrettable substitutions of the legacy ones.
