Risk assessment of exposure to benzene, toluene and formaldehyde in residential environment in China

this study, a wide field study of VOCs pollution was made in five cities in different regions in China. The survey results of three target VOCs pollutants (benzene, toluene and formaldehyde) indicated that toluene and formaldehyde exceeded the national action levels. Based on these survey results, both chronic non-cancer risks and potential carcinogenic individual risks assessment on three different groups of people, office workers, housewives and schoolchildren, for lifetime exposure to the VOCs were estimated. The results showed that all of the estimated Lifetime Cancer Probabilities (LCPs) of benzene are not acceptable in five cities; the LCPs were one or two orders of magnitude larger than the benchmark. According to USEPA, toluene has no carcinogenic effect on human beings, also the chronic health effects results were affirmative, the Hazard Indices (M) of toluene in selected cities were all less than 1, except in Beijing. The most serious indoor pollutant was formaldehyde, whose highest LCP was up to 3.410E-3, more than 3000 times over the acceptable benchmark. Meanwhile, the chronic health effect caused by formaldehyde cannot be ignored, for whose HI ranged from 20.00 to 136.94.