Parabens. From environmental studies to human health

Occurrence and human exposure of parabens and their chlorinated derivatives in swimming pools

“…Instead, the values of octanol-water partition coefficients reveal an increase as the extension of chain length (from 1.66 to 4.88). These compounds are not volatile because of their low Henry's law constants (from 2.92 × 10 −10 to 1.98 × 10 −8 atm m 3 mol −1 ) (Bledzka et al 2014;Haman et al 2015;Wang et al 2012). As the routine preservatives in various cosmetics and sun care products, parabens may be introduced by a large number of swimmers into the water of swimming pools.…”

“…In addition, due to the active phenolic hydroxyl groups, parabens can be easily transformed to mono-and di-chlorinated derivatives in chlorinated water (Terasaki et al 2012;Westerhoff et al 2005). Therefore, parabens may react with free chlorine to form chlorinated parabens during disinfection of swimming pool water, which are more stable in environment and more toxic than the corresponding parent parabens (Bledzka et al 2014;Terasaki et al 2009). These compounds may continuously accumulate and increase in swimming pools (Zwiener et al 2007).…”

Occurrence, fate and risk assessment of parabens and their chlorinated derivatives in an advanced wastewater treatment plant

“…Parabens, a group of alkyl esters of the p-hydroxybenzoic acid (PHBA), are extensively applied as antimicrobial preservatives in food commodities, industrial products, pharmaceutical and personal care products [1][2][3]. Due to their ongoing wide use and continuous introduction into the environment through domestic and industrial wastewater, parabens have been recently found in water, soil, sediment, dust and fish [4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are considered efficient in the removal and degradation of parabens [1,9]. Several studies have demonstrated that most of parabens in aqueous-phase were effectively removed during conventional sewage treatments in WWTPs, with the average removal rate over 90% [10,11].…”

“…Therefore, PHBA can be still regarded as estrogenic, so its occurrence and fate should be included in future studies. Moreover, with the active phenolic hydroxyl groups, parabens can be easily transformed to chlorinated derivatives in chlorinated water [21], which are considerably more stable in environment and more toxic to aquatic organisms than the corresponding parent compounds [1,22]. To the best of our knowledge, there are only very scarce data available on the presence and levels of PHBA and chlorinated derivatives in the WWTPs [23].…”