Occurrence of phthalates in facemasks used in India and its implications for human exposure

ABSTRACT

Synthetic polymers with additives are used in the manufacturing of face masks (FMs); hence, FMs could be a potential source of exposure to phthalic acid esters (PAEs). India stands second in the world in terms of the FMs usage since the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic. However, little is known about the PAEs content of FMs used in India. Some PAEs, such as DEHP and DBP are suspected endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs); hence, wearing FM may increase the risk of exposure to these EDCs. In this study, we collected 91 samples of FMs from eight Indian cities and analyzed for five PAEs viz. DMP, DEP, DBP, BBP, and DEHP. The PAEs contents in FMs ranged from 101.79 to 27,948.64 ng/g. The carcinogenic risk of N 95 with filter, N-95, and cloth masks was higher than the threshold levels. The findings indicate the need to control PAEs in FMs through regulatory actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• face mask
• human exposure
• phthalates
• risk assessment

Acknowledgments

The author (Nandini Shende) thanks the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, Government of India, for providing a Research Fellowship. We also recognize the resource and funding support from CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, India.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Credit authorship contribution statement

Nandini Shende: Conceptualization, formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Experiment, Writing – review & editing; Girivyankatesh Hippargi: Conceptualization, formal analysis, Writing – review & editing; Suyog Gurjar: Writing – review & editing, formal analysis; Asirvatham Ramesh Kumar: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, formal analysis; Sadhana Rayalu: Resources, Writing – review & editing.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2022.2135691