Progressive risk assessment of polychlorinated biphenyls through a Total Diet Study in the Korean population Eun-su Shin a , Khanh-Hoang Nguyen a , Jongchul Kim a , Cho-il Kim b , Yoon-Seok Chang a, * a School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, 790-784, Republic of Korea b Department of Anti-Aging, Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), Chueongju, 363-951, Republic of Korea article info Article history: Received 25 June 2015 Received in revised form 27 August 2015 Accepted 28 August 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Total Diet Study PCBs Foodstuffs Risk assessment Korea abstract Human exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from foods was investigated through a Total Diet Study (TDS) for the first time in Korea. A representative food list was developed from food intake data. Non-selected foods were also included in the TDS through the mapping process to anticipate practical risk assessment. For better representativeness, data (2008e2011) from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) were combined with the TDS data set. And also, we estimated the dietary exposure to PCBs from various food items using a ‘best-fit’ mapping process and assessed the differences in PCB exposures by sex and age. In this study, we examined total PCBs (62 congeners) including dioxin-like PCBs (DL-PCBs) and indicator PCBs, which are congeners that are mainly detected in various environmental matrices. The average dietary exposure (3.94 ng/kg body weight/day) that was estimated through food intake was 19.7% of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A Total Diet Study (TDS) is a risk assessment method that is based on the monitoring of many types of chemical contaminants, including heavy metals, radioactive materials, endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which are found in commonly consumed foods at the retail level (KHIDI, 2012). Large-scale surveys about the dietary habits of the general population and the data on the concentrations of compounds in food are generally utilized to estimate the dietary intake of com- pounds that are of concern. The estimates are scientifically compared and evaluated with toxicological references, such as the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) and the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI). A TDS is considered to be the most cost-effective and reliable approach for evaluating the dietary intake of specific compounds in large cohorts; therefore, the implementation of a TDS is increasing, and a TDS is used in many countries, such as the United States, Australia, and Japan. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the use of a TDS approach for confirming whether the exposure levels of specific chemicals cause potential risks to health (WHO, 2005a). Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were commercially manufac- tured for industrial use as heat transfer fluids, hydraulic lubricants and dielectric fluids in electronic components due to their ther- mochemical stability before being banned in the United States in 1979. Nevertheless, the high stability of PCBs causes them to be non-biodegradable compounds in many environments and to easily accumulate in the food chain (Rushneck et al., 2004; Safe, 1993). Their stability in environmental matrices are caused by the high log K ow values (from 4.5 for monochlorobiphenyls to 8.26 for higher chlorinated PCBs) which are increase with an increase in the number of chlorine substituents (Wania, 1998). PCBs are classified as Annex A (elimination) and Annex C (unintentional production) contaminants in the Stockholm Convention because of their envi- ronmental persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity (UNEP, 2010). Among 209 different theoretical PCB congeners, dioxin-like PCBs (DL-PCBs) can cause carcinogenic and immunotoxicological effects that are similar to those caused by 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p- dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) because of their structural similarities (WHO, 2014). And many types of PCBs toxicity and metabolism are related with their structure-activity and chlorine substituted sites (HHS, 2000). At the WHO International Programme on Chemical Safety meetings in June 2005, the toxic equivalency factors (TEFs) for DL- PCBs were reevaluated based on the toxic potency of 2,3,7,8-TCDD which is the most toxic congener among the PCDD/Fs (Van den Berg et al., 2006). Furthermore, non-DL-PCBs can cause * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ82 54 279 2281; fax: þ82 54 279 8299. E-mail address: yschang@postech.ac.kr (Y.-S. Chang). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Pollution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envpol http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2015.08.051 0269-7491/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Environmental Pollution 207 (2015) 403e412