ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2025
Characterization of Background Exposures to Ethylene Oxide in the United States: A Reality Check on Theoretical Health Risks for Potentially Exposed Populations near Industrial Sources.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Regarding ethylene exposure and endogenous ethylene oxide levels in humans (Lin et al., 2025).Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- Molecular dosimetry of hemoglobin adducts in mice exposed to ethylene oxide.Archives of toxicology · 2026Article
- Investigation of Ethylene Oxide Genotoxicity Dose-Response to Inform Cancer Risk Assessment.Environmental and molecular mutagenesis · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Ethylene oxide (EO) is an industrial chemical and sterilant that is released into ambient air from natural and unregulated anthropogenic sources that contribute to background exogenous exposure and from regulated industrial sources that contribute to additional exogenous exposure for near-facility populations. Metabolic processes contribute to substantial background endogenous exposures to EO, complicating the interpretation of the relation between total background exposure and the health significance of added industrial exogenous exposure. In 2021, Kirman and colleagues characterized the total and endogenous equivalent background concentrations for U.S. populations, which are substantially greater than the USEPA 2016 EO cancer reassessment risk-specific concentrations (0.00011-0.011 ppb), suggesting that the consideration of background exposure could be used as a reality check for the utility of the reassessment in managing EO risk for industrially exposed populations. New exposure biomarker data and background ambient concentration data for EO have become available since the 2021 assessment and are used here to refine the estimates of U.S. population total and endogenous equivalent background EO concentrations. Refined equivalent background concentrations as well as total equivalent exposure estimates for U.S. smokers provide context as to the health significance of near-industry population added exposure and a reality check for the utility of USEPA and TCEQ risk-specific concentrations in managing and communicating EO risk.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.