High-solution emission patterns and health risks of volatile organic compounds from automobile repair industries in Beijing

Abstract The increasing automobile repair industries (ARIs) with spray facilities have become an important volatile organic compounds (VOCs) pollution source in China. However, the VOCs health risk assessment for long-term exposure in ARIs have not been well characterized. In this study, though sampled VOCs from 51 typical ARIs in Beijing, the relationship between emission patterns, average daily exposure concentrations (EC) and health risks were comprehensively analyzed with the health assessment method. Results showed that concentrations of 117 VOCs from the samples ranged from 68.53 to 19863.32 µg·m − 3 , aromatics were the main VOCs component in mix paint (MP) workshops and water-based paint spraying (WPS) workshops, accounting for 44.00% and 70.08%, respectively. And ARIs operator's daily VOCs inhalation EC was 11.24-1460.70 µg·m − 3 . The method of inhalation exposure health risk assessment was firstly used to evaluate carcinogenicity and non-carcinogenicity risk for sprayers in ARIs. The cumulative lifetime carcinogenic risk (LCR) for 24 sampled VOCs were within acceptable ranges, while the mean hazard index (HI) with 44 sampled VOCs was over 1. Among them, the LCR and HI of VOCs in solvent-based spraying workshops were 8.72E-12 to 5.66E-7 and 0.13 to 22.37, and ethanol had a high carcinogenic risk. Of these, the mean HI associated with aromatics were 6.45 to 9.64. Our study will provide the important references for the standard of VOCs occupational exposure health limits in ARIs.