Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure is suspected to be linked to oxidative damage. Herein, ten PAH human exposure biomarkers [hydroxylated PAH metabolites (OH-PAHs)] and five oxidative stress biomarkers (OSBs) were detected in urine samples collected from participants living in a rural area (n = 181) in Northwestern China. The median molar concentration of ΣOH-PAHs in urine was 47.0 pmol mL-1. The 2-hydroxynaphthalene (2-OHNap; median: 2.21 ng mL-1) was the dominant OH-PAH. The risk assessment of PAH exposure found that hazard index (HI) values were <1, indicating that the PAH exposure of rural people in Jingyuan would not generate significant cumulative risks. Smokers (median: 0.033) obtained higher HI values than nonsmokers (median: 0.015, p < 0.01), suggesting that smokers face a higher health risk from PAH exposure than nonsmokers. Pearson correlation and multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that ΣOH-PAH concentrations were significant factors in increasing the oxidative damage to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine, 8-OHdG), ribonucleic acid (RNA) (8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine, 8-oxoGua), and protein (o, o'-dityrosine, diY) (p < 0.05). Among all PAH metabolites, only 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHPyr) could positively affect the expression of all five OSBs (p < 0.05), suggesting that urinary 1-OHPyr might be a reliable biomarker for PAH exposure and a useful indicator for assessing the impacts of PAH exposure on oxidative stress. This study is focused on the relation between PAH exposure and oxidative damage and lays a foundation for the study of the health effect mechanism of PAHs.
Keywords: exposure; human urine; oxidative stress; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; risk assessment.