Phthalates in plastic bottled non-alcoholic beverages from China and estimated dietary exposure in adults

ABSTRACT

Concentrations of six phthalates were determined in 69 plastic bottled non-alcoholic beverages collected from marketplaces in China. Di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) and di-(2-ethylhexyl)-phthalate (DEHP) were the most detected compounds with frequencies of 100%. Dimethyl phthalate was found less, with a mean frequency of almost 34%. The samples were divided into seven groups. The frequencies of phthalates in these groups ranged from 6.67% to 100%, which indicated that different types of beverages were differently contaminated by phthalates. DEHP contained the highest mean and median concentrations (1.60 ng g⁻¹ and 0.62 ng g⁻¹), followed by DBP (1.34 ng g⁻¹ and 0.27 ng g⁻¹). For DBP, the highest phthalate concentration of 14.3 ng g⁻¹ was measured. The results of estimated daily intake (EDI) showed that the risk of Chinese adults exposed to these 6 phthalates in beverages examined was lower than the reference doses as suggested by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The range of EDI values was between 1.77 × 10^–4 μg kg-bw⁻¹ day⁻¹ and 0.478 μg kg-bw⁻¹ day⁻¹.

KEYWORDS:

• Phthalates
• non-alcoholic beverage
• concentration
• exposure risks

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant 13JJ3155; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 2014M562104; Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department under Grant 2015A130, and the Construct Program of the Key Discipline in Hunan Province (Applied Chemistry).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant 13JJ3155; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 2014M562104; Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department under Grant 2015A130 and Construct Program of the Key Discipline in Hunan Province (Applied Chemistry).