Human exposure to parent and halogenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons via food consumption in Shenzhen, China

Abstract

Human exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and halogenated PAHs (HPAHs) via food consumption is still not clear in south China so far. The goals of this work are to assess human exposure to parent and halogenated PAHs via food ingestion and the cancer risk for population in Shenzhen, a new urban center in south China. Sixteen PAHs and nine HPAHs were determined in vegetable, pork and rice samples collected from Shenzhen. In general, the population in Shenzhen was exposed to higher levels of PAHs via food ingestion in comparison to that reported for other countries in recent years, but lower than that estimated for two northern cities in China. The cancer risk values induced by exposure to PAHs and HPAHs for male and female on each subgroup were between the serious risk level (10^− 4) and the acceptable risk level (10^− 6). Children faced the highest cancer risk, followed by adolescents, seniors and adults.

Introduction

Since polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were regarded as carcinogenic and toxic to animals and humans, their distributions in the environment and exposure to human have generated great interest (Boström et al., 2002, Menzie et al., 1992). But people seldom notice that halogenated PAHs (HPAHs) have a larger toxicological affect on life body than their corresponding parent PAHs (Ohura et al., 2009). Therefore, different human exposure routes to PAHs have been assessed in previous studies (Fiala et al., 2001, Tang et al., 2009, Vyskocil et al., 2000, Zeng et al., 2010, Zhang et al., 2009). Although HPAHs have been detected in various environmental samples (Ohura et al., 2005, Sun et al., 2011), very limited information concerning their profiles in food was available so far (Ding et al., 2012). Of human exposure routes to PAHs, dietary ingestion has been identified as the principal route (> 70%) for nonsmokers and non-occupationally exposed populations (Alomirah et al., 2011, Falco et al., 2003, Fontcuberta et al., 2006, Menzie et al., 1992, Phillips, 1999, Vyskocil et al., 2000). But for HPAHs, we need to verify whether this is the case because of lacking of related information. We noticed that dietary exposures to PAHs have been assessed in three large cities (Beijing, Tianjin, and Taiyuan) in north China (Li et al., 2005, Li et al., 2009, Xia et al., 2010). However, dietary exposure to both parent and halogenated PAHs for population in China has not been examined adequately so far.

Considering that vegetable, meat, and rice were the three most ingested food categories (~ 60% of the total diet for Shenzhen population) (Lei et al., 2011), these food samples were collected from wholesale markets for agricultural products in Shenzhen to quantify the profile of PAHs and HPAHs in foods and to evaluate toxic potencies and dietary intake of these pollutants on different ages. Based on that, the excess cancer risk induced by dietary exposure to these compounds was estimated as well.