1-Hydroxypyrene in children urine after exposure to benzo(a)pyrene at school

Benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) is classified as a carcinogenic compound on humans and animals. The presence of metabolite 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHP) in the urine is commonly used as a biomarker to BaP. We measured the BaP concentration from schools using sorbent tubes with a charcoal filter and analyze it using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with a fluorescence detector. To evaluate and measure the exposure risk of benzo(a)pyrene to primary school children in West Jakarta, Indonesia. We used a cross-sectional study design with two different methods of Public Health Assessment, i.e., environmental health risk assessment and environmental health epidemiology. We used 84 students as our sample, which were determined using probability proportional to size; and picked using the purposive sampling method. The risk of carcinogenic exposure of BaP in three study locations was considered under the safety limit (i.e., realtime RQ < 1). The mean BaP concentration was the highest at school number 2 with a value of 0.0092 mg/m3. The mean 1-OHP concentration extracted from urine samples was also the highest at school number 2 with the majority being fourth-grade students. The BaP exposure inside the classroom was positively related to the 1-OHP concentration in the students’ urine (p=0.001)