You are here:
Analysis of NHANES Measured Blood PCBs in the General U.S. Population andApplication of SHEDS Model to Identify Key Exposure Factors
Citation:
Xue, J., S. Liu, V. Zartarian, A. Geller, AND Brad Schultz. Analysis of NHANES Measured Blood PCBs in the General U.S. Population andApplication of SHEDS Model to Identify Key Exposure Factors. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH. Academic Press Incorporated, Orlando, FL, 24(6):615-621, (2014).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL′s) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Studies have shown that the U.S. population continues to be exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), despite their ban more than three decades ago, but the reasons are not fully understood. The objectives of this paper are to characterize patterns of PCBs in blood by age, gender, and ethnicity, and identify major exposure factors. EPA's SHEDS-Dietary exposure model was applied, combining fish tissue PCB levels from a NYC Asian Market survey with NHANES dietary consumption data, and then linked with blood biomarkers for the same NHANES study subjects. Results reveal that the mean concentration of total PCBs in blood were higher with increasing age; however, for the same age, gender, and ethnicity, the blood PCB concentrations measured in the later NHANES survey were significantly lower than those in the earlier one. The decrease within an age group between the two survey periods lessened with increasing age. Blood PCBs among different ethnicities ranked differently between the older and younger age groups within each survey. Non-Hispanic Blacks had significantly higher blood PCBs for the >30 year age group. For the 12 to ≤ 30 year age group, the “Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American or multiracial” group had the highest values, with patterns fairly consistent with fish consumption and modeled PCB exposure patterns. We conclude that for younger people, patterns correspond to reduced environmental contamination over time, and are strongly associated with fish consumption and dietary exposures. Higher PCB concentrations in blood of the older population may partially reflect past exposures to higher environmental concentrations, particularly prior to the ban.
URLs/Downloads:
PCBS_PAPER_REV _2_.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 97.522 KB, about PDF)Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology
