Oral bioaccessibility of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in settled dust: A review of measurement methods, data and influencing factors

Abstract

Many semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), suspected of reprotoxic, neurotoxic or carcinogenic effects, were measured in indoor settled dust. Dust ingestion is a non-negligible pathway of exposure to some of these SVOCs, and an accurate knowledge of the real exposure is necessary for a better evaluation of health risks. To this end, the bioaccessibility of SVOCs in dust needs to be considered. In the present work, bioaccessibility measurement methods, SVOCs' oral bioaccessibility data and influencing factors were reviewed. SVOC bioaccessibilities (%) ranged from 11 to 94, 8 to 100, 3 to 92, 1 to 81, 6 to 52, and 2 to 17, for brominated flame retardants, organophosphorus flame retardants, polychlorobiphenyls, phthalates, pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, respectively. Measurements method produced varying results depending on the inclusion of food and/or sink in the model. Characteristics of dust, e.g., organic matter content and particle size, also influenced bioaccessibility data. Last, results were influenced by SVOC properties, such as octanol/water partition coefficient and migration pathway into dust. Factors related to dust and SVOCs could be used in prediction models. To this end, more bioaccessibility studies covering more substances should be performed, using methods that are harmonized and validated by comparison to in-vivo studies.

Effects of carbonaceous materials and particle size on oral and inhalation bioaccessibility of PAHs and OPEs in airborne particles

“…Liu et al found that higher bioaccessibility of PAHs in large particle-size indoor dust (200-2000 µm) than in smaller particles (Liu et al 2018). Some studies observed oral bioaccessibility increases with decreasing particle size, and attributed this to the higher speci c surface areas of small particles (Raffy et al 2018;Wang et al 2013b). To our knowledge, there is only one study to date describing the effect of particle-size of airborne particles, which found a generally increasing trend of bioaccessibility of trace elementals with decreasing particle size (Niu et al 2010).…”

Oral bioavailability reveals an overestimation of the toxicity of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in atmospheric particulate matter

“…This great difference could be resulted in an overestimation of cancer risks when considering total concentrations instead of using bioaccessible/bioavailable concentrations. Within this context, many authors have already reported the necessity to consider bioaccessibilities and bioavailabilities on exposure and health risk models, providing a more realistic assessment (Huang et al 2014b(Huang et al , 2018Kastury et al 2018;Raffy et al 2018;Gao et al 2018;Moreda-Piñeiro et al 2019). In addition, it is important to point out that our health risk assessment could be overestimated even using oral bioavailable concentrations because of not considering other parameters such as PM 10 deposition in different lung regions and clearance rates.…”

“…However, in vitro oral bioaccessibility studies of organic pollutants in particulate matter were not found in the literature, while there were some studies applied to indoor/outdoor dust and soils for organic compounds, i.e. PAHs (Tang et al 2006;Kang et al 2011;Collins et al 2013;Li et al 2015;Kademoglou et al 2018a), organophosphate flame retardants (Quintana et al 2017), semi-volatile organic compounds (Raffy et al 2018), polychlorinated biphenyls (Wang et al 2013) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (Yu et al 2011;Kademoglou et al 2018b;Gao et al 2019b). The stringent analytical requirements (target pollutants enrichment, due to the low levels; and pollutant isolation from the synthetic fluids matrix) for organic pollutant quantification in bioaccessible/bioavailable fractions might explain the scare information.…”

On-line coupling of thermal extraction with gas chromatography / tandem mass spectrometry for the analysis of semivolatile organic compounds in a few milligrams of indoor dust

“…Furthermore, the contamination of dust by SVOCs may occur via volatilization and recondensation of the SVOCs on dust particles, direct transfer from horizontal surfaces to dust, or weathering or abrasion of polymers [58]. SVOCs can therefore be sorbed onto the surface of dust particles or be a constituent of these particles, which may explain why some compounds presented higher RSDs than others for the same sample.…”