Health Risks from Inhaled Polychlorinated Biphenyls

Evaluating Health Risks from Inhaled Polychlorinated Biphenyls: Research Needs for Addressing Uncertainty

A recent article published in Environ Health Perspect by Lehmann et al. DOI:10.1289/ehp.1408564 describes some common sources of PCBs in indoor air and estimate the contribution of inhalation exposure to total PCB exposure for select age groups and identified some critical areas of research needed to improve assessment of exposure and exposure response for inhaled PCBs.

Air concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in some buildings can be orders of magnitude higher than background levels. The potential health risk posed by PCBs from indoor environment need to be assessed. To assess such risk we need to face some uncertainty.

Previous assessments of exposure and risk associated with PCBs primarily focused on dietary intake of contaminated food. With many recent studies suggested the importance of indoor PCB exposure, this article points out one important uncertainty for risk assessment of PCBs from indoor exposure.

The distributions of  PCB congeners in food and in indoor air are quite different. As such, toxicity of of PCB mixtures from indoor environment is likely to be different from toxicity due to dietary intake.

In addition to the uncertainty mentioned in the article, I think another uncertainty we need to face lies in the pathway from external exposure to internal exposure. Bioavailability/toxicokinetics of PCBs from inhalation would be quite different from dietary intake and need to be addressed.