Internal exposure to organic substances in a municipal waste incinerator

Assays of urinary mutagenicity, urinary 3-hydroxy-benzo(a)pyrene, and urinary 1-hydroxypyrene were used to study their suitability in estimating exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in coal tar products. Rats exposed to coal tar solutions applied on the dorsal skin excreted mutagens, 3-hydroxy-benzo(a)pyrene, and 1-hydroxypyrene dose dependently in their urine. The correlation between the three parameters was high. Five dermatologic patients undergoing topical coal tar treatment excreted low concentrations of 3-hydroxy-benzo(a)pyrene and high concentrations of 1-hydroxypyrene. A significant correlation between the excretion of the two metabolites was found. The smoking workers of a coal tar distillation plant showed a significantly enhanced urinary mutagenicity compared with their nonsmoking colleagues, but an increase due to occupational exposure was not found. However, the concentration of 1-hydroxypyrene in the urine of these workers highly exceeded the upper 95 percentile of a reference population. The urinary excretion of 1-hydroxypyrene of smoking referents was not significantly increased compared with that of nonsmoking referents. The data suggest that urinary 1-hydroxypyrene is a sensitive and specific marker for the assessment of occupational exposure to PAH.

In late 1983, we conducted a cross-sectional epidemiologic study to evaluate persons at risk of exposure to three chemical waste sites by comparing clinical disease end points and clinical chemistry parameters with serum polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) levels. A total of 106 individuals participated in the study. The only statistically significant finding in regard to self-reported, physician-diagnosed health problems was a dose-response relationship between serum PCB levels and the occurrence of high blood pressure; however, this association failed to achieve statistical significance (p = 0.08) when we controlled for possible confounding effects of both age and smoking. Serum triglyceride and cholesterol levels were also higher in the group with elevated serum PCBs; additionally, there were isolated statistically significant correlations of serum aspartate aminotransferase (SGOT) with serum lipid fraction-adjusted PCB level (r = -0.21) and serum albumin (r = -0.24) and total bilirubin (r = 0.30) with serum PCB level. Although the ranges of serum levels reported herein from exposures to PCBs in the general environment are lower than those that have been associated with acute symptoms or illness in other studies, whether these levels are associated with long-term health risks is not known. Associations of such chronic, low-dose exposures with observable health effects as suggested by this study must be evaluated further before any final conclusions can be drawn.