PROBABILISTIC EVALUATION OF CANCER AND NON-CANCER RISK ASSOCIATED WITH EXPOSURE TO BDE 209 IN AUTOMOBILES

摘要

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have historically been added to a variety of consumer products to increase their resistance to fire. Recently, there has been a growing interest in evaluating the levels of PBDEs found in automobiles. Collectively, these reports indicate that (a) concentrations of PBDEs are higher in dust relative to air, and (b) BDE 209 tends to dominate the congener profiles. Given the concerns about the levels of PBDEs in automobiles, the objective of this evaluation was to conduct a human health risk assessment associated with ingestion of BDE 209 from automobile dust in the U.S. Probabilistic techniques were employed to determine central tendency and upper-percentile estimates of theoretical excess cancer risk and non-cancer hazard, as well as to evaluate which parameters had the greatest contribution to variance of the estimates. Results of the probabilistic assessment indicated that for both adults and children, the non-cancer hazard estimates associated with ingestion of BDE 209 in automobiles was far below one, and that theoretical excess cancer risk estimates were also within acceptable risk ranges for both children and adults. The concentration of BDE 209 was the parameter that demonstrated the greatest contribution to variance in the probabilistic assessment. Many uncertainties were identified in this analysis, underlying the importance of obtaining robust data in order to more fully characterize this exposure scenario, as well as evaluate the potential toxicity associated with this exposure route.