Prior Projects

Principal Investigators

Olivier Jolliet

Additional Personnel

Yvan Wenger

About this Project

This project aims to explore and better understand the source-to-body fate, exposure and body distribution of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). PBDEs are considered emerging contaminants of great concern due to both their toxicity and the rapidly rising levels found in human and in the environment. The idea is to couple multimedia fate and exposure models with physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models for humans to quantitatively predict variations in body burden as a function of sources, exposure history and personal characteristics. For fate and exposure, the intake fractions – the fraction of an emission taken in by a population - were calculated based on chemical properties using the IMPACT 2002 model. In the case of emissions to air, this resulted in intake fractions by ingestion of between 1x10-3 and 3x10-3, with dominant intake through meat, dairy products and cereals. Intake fractions by inhalation are three orders of magnitude lower. In the case of emissions to water, the intake fractions ranged from 1x10-3 to 1x10-2 mainly through fish. In agreement with the two-film theory that predicts a lower chemical absorption and transfer into the food chain at very high log(Kow), the total intake fraction declines as the log(Kow) increases up to 8.7 in Deca-BDE.. The PBPK model was built based on Van der Molen and programmed using Berkeley-Madonna, adjusting for body fat mass as a function of Body Mass Index. The highest PBDE's serum modeled concentration were found for PBDE 47 and 99 due to their high persistence.