Inhaled formaldehyde: exposure estimation, hazard characterization, and exposure-response analysis

Formaldehyde has been assessed as a Priority Substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Probabilistic estimates of exposure of the general population in Canada to formaldehyde in ambient and indoor air are presented. Critical health effects include sensory irritation and the potential to induce tumors in the upper respiratory tract (the nasal region in rodents and potentially the lungs of humans). The majority of the general population is exposed to airborne concentrations of formaldehyde less than those typically associated with sensory irritation (i.e., 0.1 mg/m3). Based primarily upon data derived from laboratory studies, the inhalation of formaldehyde under conditions that induce cytotoxicity and sustained regenerative proliferation within the respiratory tract is considered to present a carcinogenic hazard to humans. At airborne levels for which the prevalence of sensory irritation is minimal (i.e., 0.1 mg/m3), risks of respiratory-tract cancers for the general population estimated on the basis of a biologically motivated case-specific model are exceedingly low. This biologically motivated case-specific model incorporates two-stage clonal expansion and is supported by dosimetry calculations from computational fluid dynamics analyses of formaldehyde flux in various regions of the nose and single-path modeling for the lower respiratory tract. The degree of confidence in the underlying database and uncertainties in estimates of exposure and in characterization of hazard and dose response are delineated.