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Occurrence and risk assessment of selected phthalates in drinking water from waterworks in China

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Abstract

The first nationwide survey of six phthalates (diethyl phthalate (DEP); dimethyl phthalate (DMP); di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP); butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP); bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP); din-octyl phthalate (DnOP)) in drinking waters from waterworks was conducted across seven geographical zones in China. Of the six target phthalates, DBP and DEHP were the highest abundant phthalates with median (± interquartile range) values of 0.18 ± 0.47 and 0.18 ± 0.97 μg/L, respectively, but did not exceed the limit values in China’s Standards for Drinking Water Quality. These phthalates in drinking water were generally higher in the northern regions of China than those in the southern and eastern regions. Based on the investigated concentrations, lifetime exposure risk assessment indicated that phthalates in drinking water did not pose carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risks to Chinese residents, even under the conservative scenario (with 95th percentile risk). In addition, we found that DEHP contributed the greatest risk to the total exposure risk of all the selected phthalates and oral ingestion was the main exposure route for phthalates in drinking water.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the project “Risk Assessment of Contaminants in Drinking Water Based on National Survey in China (2009ZX07419-001),” which was funded by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China (MOHURD). We gratefully acknowledge Prof. Min Yang, Dr. Wei An, and other staff in the Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their assistances in sampling. The authors also acknowledge support by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Hightower Chair, and the Georgia Research Alliance at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Conflict of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

Compliance with ethical standards

We confirm that this manuscript complies with the ethical rules applicable for Environmental Science and Pollution Research. It is the original work of the authors, and all authors mutually agree that it should be submitted to this journal. It has not been submitted to this journal before and has not been submitted to other journals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaowei Liu, Jianghong Shi, Ting Bo & Huiyuan Li

  2. Brook Byers Institute of Sustainable Systems, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    John C. Crittenden

Authors
  1. Xiaowei Liu
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  2. Jianghong Shi
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  3. Ting Bo
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  4. Huiyuan Li
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  5. John C. Crittenden
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Correspondence to Jianghong Shi.

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Responsible editor: Leif Kronberg

Electronic supplementary material

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11356_2015_4253_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Detailed descriptions of the recoveries and method detection limits of the six phthalates, duplicate samples, a map of the sampling regions, estimations of phthalate concentrations in the vapor phase, the estimation of permeability coefficients and the results of statistical tests. (DOCX 491 kb)

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Liu, X., Shi, J., Bo, T. et al. Occurrence and risk assessment of selected phthalates in drinking water from waterworks in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 10690–10698 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4253-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4253-9

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