Human health risk assessment of DDTs and HCHs through dietary exposure in Nanjing, China

- Comprehensive food samples were collected in Nanjing, China.
- Monte Carlo simulation was used to assess dietary intake and health risk.
- Both non-cancer risk and cancer risk for different groups in Nanjing were assessed.
- Distributions of both exposure and risk were depicted for different groups in Nanjing.

In a market based study in Nanjing, a typical southeast city in China, the most common consumed 23 kinds of foods from eleven different categories (vegetable, fruit, fish, pork, livestock meat, chicken, egg, milk, oil, rice and flour) were sampled in November 2015. The concentrations of DDTs and HCHs in foods were analyzed using gas chromatography with mass spectrometer detector. The residual amounts of DDTs and HCHs in foods were 0.95-3.53 ng g−1 and 0.32-1.96 ng g−1, respectively. The highest residual of ∑10OCPs was 4.75 ng g−1 in livestock meat and the lowest was 1.31 ng g−1 in flour. Estimated daily intakes of both DDTs and HCHs for children were higher than other age groups regardless of the gender. With respect to food categories, the consumption of vegetables generated higher dietary exposure of DDTs and HCHs than other food categories for all age categories, which accounted for 20.21%-29.18% of the total. The daily intakes of γ-HCH and DDTs for all population groups were far below the acceptable amounts suggested by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization. Health risk assessment indicated that there was no obvious non-cancer risk for local residents, whereas the cancer risk was estimated to be from 10−6∼10−4, being higher than the acceptable risk level and lower than the priority risk level. Among residents of different gender and age, females showed higher risk than males in all age groups, and children were the most vulnerable age group to health risk.