Benzene Exposure and Cancer Risk from Commercial Gasoline Station Fueling Events Using a Novel Self-Sampling Protocol

Andrew N. Patton, Misti Levy-Zamora, Mary Fox and Kirsten Koehler
Additional contact information
Andrew N. Patton: Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Misti Levy-Zamora: Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Mary Fox: CARTEEH (Centers for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health), Texas Transportation Institute, 624 N. Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Kirsten Koehler: Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: Tens of millions of individuals go to gasoline stations on a daily basis in the United States. One of the constituents of gasoline is benzene, a Group 1 carcinogen that has been strongly linked to both occupational and non-occupational leukemias. While benzene content in gasoline is federally regulated, there is approximately a thirty-year data gap in United States research on benzene exposures from pumping gasoline. Using a novel self-sampling protocol with whole air canisters, we conducted a gasoline pumping exposure assessment for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) on Baltimore, MD consumers. Geometric mean exposures (geometric standard deviations) were 3.2 (2.7) ppb,9.5 (3.5) ppb, 2.0 (2.8) ppb, and 7.3 (3.0) ppb, respectively, on 32 samples. Using the benzene exposures, we conducted consumer and occupational probabilistic risk assessments and contextualized the risk with ambient benzene exposure risk. We found that the consumer scenarios did not approach the 1:1,000,000 excess risk management threshold and that the occupational scenario did not exceed the 1:10,000 excess risk management threshold. Further, in all Monte Carlo trials, the ambient risk from benzene exposure exceeded that of pumping risk for consumers, but that in approximately 30% of occupational trials, the pumping risk exceeded the ambient risk.

Keywords: gasoline; benzene; TVOC; exposure assessment; probabilistic risk assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1872/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1872/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:4:p:1872-:d:499580

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().