ENVIRONMENTAL AND URINARY REFERENCE VALUES AS MARKERS OF EXPOSURE TO HYDROCARBONS IN URBAN AREAS

A study using individual dosimetry to evaluate the daily inhaled dose of sixteen aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons in three groups of prim ary school children, living in three Italian towns with 50 000 inhabit ants or less, (Treviglio-Lombardy; Poggibonsi-Tuscany; Valenza-Piedmon t) is presented. The simultaneous use of two passive samplers (radial diffusion) for each child, for a 24 h period, determined both the indo or and indoor + outdoor environmental reference concentrations. We mea sured the urinary levels of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes for each child and hence determined the urinary reference values for BTEX. We also considered the possibility of using benzene in urine as a biomarker of environmental exposure of the general population to thi s xenobiotic. We evaluated how both the environmental and biological m easures were influenced by the presence of smokers in the surveyed chi ldren's houses. For the group of children living in Poggibonsi, we con sidered the influence of the living area and the traffic density on en vironmental concentrations of benzene (indoor and indoor + outdoor).