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Occurrence, health risk assessment and water quality criteria derivation of six personal care products (PCPs) in Huangpu River, China

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Abstract

Personal care products (PCPs) have shown adverse health effects on humans. However, their health risk associated with fish consumption and relevant water quality criteria are still not well documented. This study investigated the occurrence and health risk of six PCPs (triclosan, bisphenol-A, and four commonly used organic ultraviolet (UV) filters, i.e., homosalate (HMS), 4-methylbenzylidene camphor (4-MBC), oxybenzone (BP-3), and octocrylene (OC)). River water and three trophic levels of fish species were collected from Huangpu River in Shanghai. The concentration range of the six PCPs were 1.48–89.76 ng/L in water and 0.40–10.75 ng/g dry weight in fish. Estimated daily intake (EDI) and target hazard quotient (THQ) of the PCPs indicated that consuming these fish would not pose non-carcinogenic risks. The maximum allowable fish consumption rates ranged from 85 to 1760 and 155 to 3230 meals per month for children and adults, respectively. As to the four organic UV filters, it is the first time to report the fish consumption advisories. Finally, the human health ambient water quality criteria (AWQC) values of HMS, 4-MBC, BP-3, OC, TCS, and BPA (i.e., 0.1218, 0.7311, 0.3494, 0.0477, 235.8, and 154.7 μg/L, respectively) were proposed, and they can serve as a valuable technical reference for global development and revision of aquatic environmental quality standards for these emerging contaminants.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article [and its supplementary information files].

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Funding

This study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21277092) and the Medicine and Engineering Collaborative Research Fund of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (No. YG2019ZDA29).

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Yihui Jin: Writing, original draft; methodology; investigation; formal analysis. Tao Yuan: Conceptualization; methodology; writing, review and editing; supervision; funding acquisition; project administration. Jiafan Li: Investigation, methodology, writing—review and editing. Zhemin Shen: Data curation, methodology. Ying Tian: Methodology, funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tao Yuan.

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Jin, Y., Yuan, T., Li, J. et al. Occurrence, health risk assessment and water quality criteria derivation of six personal care products (PCPs) in Huangpu River, China. Environ Monit Assess 194, 577 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10271-w

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