Mutagenic and Carcinogenic Hazards of Settled House Dust I: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Content and Excess Lifetime Cancer Risk from Preschool Exposure

Abstract

Settled house dust (SHD) may be a significant source of children's indoor exposure to hazardous substances including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In this study, organic extracts of sieved vacuum cleaner dust from 51 homes were examined for the presence of 13 PAHs via GC/MS. PAHs were found in all samples with levels of total PAHs ranging between 1.5 and 325 µg g -1 . The PAH concentrations in the SHD were correlated with information contained in corresponding household questionnaires. Analyses showed levels of PAHs to be negatively associated with noncombustion activities such as vacuum cleaning frequency. A risk assessment was conducted to evaluate the excess lifetime cancer risks posed to preschool aged children who ingested PAHs in SHD. The assessment revealed that exposure to PAHs at levels found in 90% of the homes (<40 µg g -1 ) would result in excess cancer risks that are considered acceptable (i.e., 1-100 × 10 -6 ). However, exposure to higher levels of PAHs found in five homes yielded risks that could be higher than 1 × 10 -4 .

Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk of PM2.5 Bound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) before and after the Wildland Fire Episode

“…) (Lin et al, 2008;Chiang et al, 2009) and the Canadian maximum acceptable level of risk (1 × 10 -5 ) (Maertens et al, 2008). The current study indicates there is some concerns on adverse health impact related with PM 2.5 bounded PAHs exposure for preschool children via non-dietary exposure in home environment, based on the calculation of Eqs.…”

“…The cancer risks of WCs for ingestion rate of 50 and 100 mg day -1 were greatly higher than those of NNP for 851 and 567 times in that order. Although the cancer risks of NNP were much lower than those of WCs, its average values ranged from 10 -4 to 10 -3 (i.e., one cancer incidence case per million), which can be considered as unacceptable cancer risks (Maertens et al, 2008). These values are comparable to those of foundry workers (9.06 × 10 -4 and 1.09 × 10 -3 ) in Taiwan (Liu et al, 2010), but higher than those predicted as occupational exposure for sinter metal workers (3.18 × 10 -5 and 4.98 × 10 -5…”

“…The cancer risks associated with non-dietary ingestion of PAHs in house dust for preschool children as estimated by using Eq. (5) (U.S. EPA, 1997;Maertens et al, 2008).…”

Estimating exposures to indoor contaminants using residential dust

“…Investigators have reported that PAH dust concentrations were higher in urban compared with rural homes (Chuang et al, 1999;Maertens et al, 2004;Mannino and Orecchio, 2008), in smoking compared with non-smoking homes (Maertens et al, 2004;Mannino and Orecchio, 2008), in spring compared with summer (Murkerjee et al, 1997), and in homes with decreased cleaning frequency (Maertens et al, 2008). In the largest study of determinants of PAH in residential dust (N ¼ 583), investigators found that PAH concentrations were associated with residence age, the presence of gas heating (as opposed to electric heating), and estimated outdoor PAH air concentrations (Whitehead et al, 2011).…”

Concentrations and potential risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from indoor dust of Bushehr, Iran

“…Since people (especially kids, housewives and old people) spend approximately 85% of their lifetime indoors (Amorello et al, 2015;Rudel et al, 2003), indoor air quality has a prominent role in their health (Maertens et al, 2008). Moreover, healthy housing environment is one of the key indexes to evaluate social stability and development (Li et al, 2009;Tao et al, 2016); however, rapid industrialization and urbanization ha caused deterioration of human settlement environments in cities through increasing pollutant emissions (Kang et al, 2011;Whitehead et al, 2011;Xu and Shu, 2012).…”