Levels of seven urinary phthalate metabolites in a human reference population.

By B. Blount, Manori J. Silva, S. Caudill, L. Needham, J. Pirkle, E. Sampson, G. Lucier, Richard J. Jackson, J. Brock. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2000

656 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a novel and highly selective technique, we measured monoester metabolites of seven commonly used phthalates in urine samples from a reference population of 289 adult humans. This analytical approach allowed us to directly measure the individual phthalate metabolites responsible for the animal reproductive and developmental toxicity while avoiding contamination from the ubiquitous parent compounds. The monoesters with the highest urinary levels found were monoethyl phthalate (95th percentile, 3,750 ppb, 2,610 microg/g creatinine), monobutyl phthalate (95th percentile, 294 ppb, 162 microg/g creatinine), and monobenzyl phthalate (95th percentile, 137 ppb, 92 microg/g creatinine), reflecting exposure to diethyl phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, and benzyl butyl phthalate. Women of reproductive age (20-40 years) were found to have significantly higher levels of monobutyl phthalate, a reproductive and developmental toxicant in rodents, than other age/gender groups (p < 0.005). Current scientific and regulatory attention on phthalates has focused almost exclusively on health risks from exposure to only two phthalates, di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate and di-isononyl phthalate. Our findings strongly suggest that health-risk assessments for phthalate exposure in humans should include diethyl, dibutyl, and benzyl butyl phthalates.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b405c7a215c5812200b530d41eb501ab24ddc6fb

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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

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Citations in the corpus

• The Association between Asthma and Allergic Symptoms in Children and Phthalates in House Dust: A Nested Case–Control Study (2004, background): “Research groups have assessed the exposures of various populations to phthalate esters by using their metabolites in human urine as biomarkers [Barr et al. 2003; Blount et al. 2000; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2003; Koch et al. 2003].”
• Mechanisms of phthalate ester toxicity in the female reproductive system. (2002, background): “The highest levels of MEHP in this study (67 ppb, 192 µg/g creatinine) are consistent with previous studies in occupationally exposed individuals (Blount et al. 2000b).”
• Urinary Creatinine Concentrations in the U.S. Population: Implications for Urinary Biologic Monitoring Measurements (2004, methodology): “These “creatinine-corrected” concentrations (micrograms analyte per gram creatinine) were reported in addition to the unadjusted concentrations in micrograms analyte per liter urine (Blount et al. 2000; Hill et al. 1995b).”
• What Are the Sources of Exposure to Eight Frequently Used Phthalic Acid Esters in Europeans? (2006, background): “Most urine screening studies in the past relied on phthalate monoesters.(3) For phthalates with short alkyl chains, monoesters represent the major human metabolites.”
• Activation of PPARα and PPARγ by Environmental Phthalate Monoesters (2003, background): “Although DEHP is produced in the largest quantity, human exposure to phthalate monoesters derived from other phthalates is apparently much greater than that of DEHP and MEHP (Blount et al., 2000).”
• Proliferation and functional maturation of Sertoli cells, and their relevance to disorders of testis function in adulthood. (2003, background): “(Blount et al., 2000).”
• Assessing exposure to phthalates - the human biomonitoring approach. (2011, neutral): “As a result, the general population is widely and continuously exposed to phthalates [16–19].”
• Environmental Chemicals in Pregnant Women in the United States: NHANES 2003–2004 (2011, background): “Because few data are available on levels of individual or multiple chemicals in pregnant women, levels in reproductive-age women have often been used as an indicator of chemical levels in pregnant women (Blount et al. 2000).”
• Perinatal exposure to the phthalates DEHP, BBP, and DINP, but not DEP, DMP, or DOTP, alters sexual differentiation of the male rat. (2000, background): “In addition, it was recently reported that human urine contained surprisingly high (ppm levels) of phthalate monoesters from as yet unidentified sources (Blount et al., 2000). A study of the exposure of newborn infants to DEHP and MEHP resulting from transfusions found plasma levels of DEHP between ”