Health risks of population exposure to phthalic acid esters through the use of plastic containers for takeaway food in China

Abstract Food delivery services have developed rapidly in China in recent years. Tens of thousands of food delivery services use hundreds of millions of plastic containers as packaging each year. This plastic packaging has the potential to cause health risks following population exposure to phthalic acid esters (PAEs) through the consumption of takeaway food in China. In this study, we used an online approach to distribute questionnaires nationwide to investigate the dietary characteristics of Chinese takeaway consumers. We collected a total of 952 valid questionnaires from 32 provinces. We also collected the main types of food packaging used in the market (n = 18). Based on the migration of PAEs to the food from the plastic packaging, we used the differentiated event frequency (EF) to calculate the chronic daily intake (CDI) of PAEs in different population. We then comprehensively evaluated the hazard quotient (HQ) and carcinogenic risk (CR) of PAE exposure in different regions and for different populations. The CDI values of different PAEs were low, at about 5.0 × 10−04–3.5 × 10−03 μg·kg−1·d−1. The amount of various PAEs released from white opaque plastic containers were relatively small, indicating that their use was relatively safe, although region, age, occupation and other factors had different degrees of impact on the CDI. The HQ was 0–0.15, and the CR was 0–1.4 × 10−08. The non-carcinogenic risks were