Phthalate esters (PAEs) are ubiquitous in indoor environments as plasticizers in indoor products. Residences are often exposed to indoor PAEs in the form of gas, particles, settled dust, and surface phases. To reveal the mechanism behind the accumulation of PAEs in different tissues or organs such as the liver and the lungs when a person exposed to indoor PAEs with different phases, a whole-body physiologically based pharmacokinetic model for PAEs is employed to characterize the dynamic process of phthalates by different intake pathways, including oral digestion, dermal adsorption, and inhalation. Among three different intake pathways, dermal penetration distributed the greatest accumulation of DEHP in most of the organs, while the accumulative concentration through oral ingestion was an order of magnitude lower than the other two doses. Based on the estimated parameters, the variation of di-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) and mono (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP) concentration in the venous blood, urine, the liver, the thymus, the pancreas, the spleen, the lungs, the brain, the heart, and the kidney for different intake scenarios was simulated. The simulated results showed a different accumulation profile of DEHP and MEHP in different organs and tissues and demonstrated that the different intake pathways will result in different accumulation distributions of DEHP and MEHP in organs and tissues and may lead to different detrimental health outcomes.
Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), such as phthalates and brominated flame retardants, is a kind of emerged pollutants due to wide application in indoor environment. Certain indoor SVOCs have been found to be associated with various adverse health effects, attracting large attentions of researchers. Due to relatively low vapor pressure, SVOCs are easily adsorbed on various surfaces including particles. Therefore, airborne SVOCs are always simultaneously presented in the gas-phase and particle-phase. Ventilation is an important means to improve indoor air quality. Different forms of indoor air distribution will affect the distribution of indoor pollutants and further affect the exposure to the human body. Therefore, in this paper, we selected Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) as the target compound and employed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique to simulate the emission of DEHP and the concentration distribution with different phases in a modeled room. Euler-Lagarian model is applied to simulate flow field, particle tracks and UDF (user defined function) was implemented to describe the dynamic adsorption of DEHP by the suspended particles. Furthermore, the effect of location of vent and airflow rate on indoor fate of DEHP were discussed and the effect of particle age on indoor fate of DEHP was also investigated.
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