Desorption of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons from Microplastics in Human Gastrointestinal Fluid Simulants─Implications for Exposure Assessment

Microplastics have been detected in various food types, suggesting inevitable human exposure. A major fraction may originate from aerial deposition and could be contaminated by ubiquitous pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). While data on the sorption of pollutants to microplastics are abundant, the subsequent desorption in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) is less understood. This prompted us to systematically investigate the release of microplastics-sorbed PAHs at realistic loadings (44–95 ng/mg) utilizing a physiology-based in vitro model comprising digestion in simulated saliva, gastric, and small and large intestinal fluids. Using benzoapyrene as a representative PAH, desorption from different microplastics based on low density polyethylene (LDPE), thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs), and polyamides (PAs) was investigated consecutively in all four GIT fluid simulants. The cumulative relative desorption (CRD) of benzoapyrene was negligible in saliva simulant but increased from gastric (4 ± 1% – 15 ± 4%) to large intestinal fluid simulant (21 ± 1% – 29 ± 6%), depending on the polymer type. CRDs were comparable for ten different microplastics in the small intestinal fluid simulant, except for a polydisperse PA-6 variant (1–10 μm), which showed an exceptionally high release (51 ± 8%). Nevertheless, the estimated contribution of microplastics-sorbed PAHs to total human PAH dietary intake was very low (≤0.1%). Our study provides a systematic data set on the desorption of PAHs from microplastics in GIT fluid simulants.