Comprehensive multipathway risk assessment of chemicals associated with recycled ("crumb") rubber in synthetic turf fields.

BACKGROUND: Thousands of synthetic turf fields in the US are regularly used by millions of individuals (particularly children and adolescents). Although many safety assessments have concluded that there are low or negligible risks related to exposure to chemicals found in the recycled rubber used to make these fields, concerns remain about the safety of this product. Existing studies of recycled rubber's potential health risks have limitations such as small sample sizes and limited evaluation of relevant exposure pathways and scenarios. OBJECTIVE: Conduct a comprehensive multipathway human health risk assessment (HHRA) of exposure to chemicals found in recycled rubber. METHODS: All available North American data on the chemical composition of recycled rubber, as well as air sampling data collected on or near synthetic turf fields, were identified via a literature search. Ingestion, dermal contact, and inhalation pathways were evaluated according to US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) guidance, and exposure scenarios for adults, adolescents, and children were considered. RESULTS: Estimated non-cancer hazards and cancer risks for all the evaluated scenarios were within US EPA guidelines. In addition, cancer risk levels for users of synthetic turf field were comparable to or lower than those associated with natural soil fields. CONCLUSIONS: This HHRA's results add to the growing body of literature that suggests recycled rubber infill in synthetic turf poses negligible risks to human health. This comprehensive assessment provides data that allow stakeholders to make informed decisions about installing and using these fields.

Derivation of an oral Maximum Allowable Dose Level for Bisphenol A.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a high production volume chemical that is used in plastics and epoxy coatings. In 2015, California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) added BPA to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals "known to cause reproductive toxicity" based on its Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee's (DART-IC) conclusion that BPA has been shown to cause female reproductive toxicity. A critical factor in determining compliance with Proposition 65 is a Maximum Allowable Dose Level (MADL), which is the exposure level at which a chemical would have no observable reproductive effect even if a person were exposed to 1000 times that level. We performed a comprehensive review of the literature, including the studies reviewed by DART-IC, and derived an oral MADL. Of all the studies we identified, Delclos et al. (2014) is of sufficient quality, has the lowest no observed effect level (NOEL), and results in the most conservative MADL of 157 µg/d. This is generally supported by other studies, including those that were considered by DART-IC. Also, the oral MADL provides a similar margin of safety as OEHHA's dermal MADL and other regulatory guidelines. Taken together, the scientific data support an oral MADL of 157 µg/d.

Stage-specific signaling pathways during murine testis development and spermatogenesis: A pathway-based analysis to quantify developmental dynamics.

Shifting the field of developmental toxicology toward evaluation of pathway perturbation requires a quantitative definition of normal developmental dynamics. This project examined a publicly available dataset to quantify pathway dynamics during testicular development and spermatogenesis and anchor toxicant-perturbed pathways within the context of normal development. Genes significantly changed throughout testis development in mice were clustered by their direction of change using K-means clustering. Gene Ontology terms enriched among each cluster were identified using MAPPfinder. Temporal pathway dynamics of enriched terms were quantified based on average expression intensity for all genes associated with a given term. This analysis captured processes that drive development, including the peak in steroidogenesis known to occur around gestational day 16.5 and the increase in meiosis and spermatogenesis-related pathways during the first wave of spermatogenesis. Our analysis quantifies dynamics of pathways vulnerable to toxicants and provides a framework for quantifying perturbation of these pathways.