Dermal uptake from clothing of SVOCs not removed by laundering

A current model of dermal uptake from clothing is applied to consider exposure implications of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) that sorb to clothes from indoor air but are not readily removed by laundering. Persistence of SVOCs on clothing results in much greater dermal uptake for high dermal permeability compounds, even in the case of lower-volatility, higher molecular weight compounds.

Clothing that spends several months or years in a home is likely to approach equilibrium for a wide range of SVOCs, smoothing out differences in exposure due to removal by laundering. Based on the present analysis, exposure assessments that include dermal uptake may be simplified to applying a value of normalized uptake in the range of 0.05-0.2 mg/(μg/m3)/m2/day.

This estimation only applies to compounds with high dermal permeability and low water solubility.