Estimations of potential risk of carcinogenic arsenic in smokeless tobacco products

Abstract

Moderate arsenic exposure may lead to health problems, and thus, measuring arsenic (As) and inorganic arsenic (iAs) exposure from smokeless tobacco products (SLTs) for different population groups is important. Atomic absorption spectroscopy was used to measure the As content in SLTs, and data obtained from the literature was used to develop a framework of calculating average As daily intake for different SLTs. For estimation of population risk, we used various types of probability density function fits, i.e., gamma, Weibull, and lognormal. Based on this framework, deterministic and probabilistic cancer risk was quantified. The estimated daily intake (EDI) of As was obtained as 13.71–54.44, 0.00–45.16 and 0.00–8.74 μg day⁻¹ for chewing tobacco, snuff tobacco and dipping tobacco, respectively. The target hazard quotient (THQ) for studied categories of SLTs was found in the range of 0.12 to 3.02, and 60% of chewing and 70% of snuff tobacco samples show THQ > 1. Incremental lifetime cancer risk (ILTR) values for individual types of SLTs were found in the range of 29.6 to 193 per 100 000. The population ILTR of chewing tobacco and snuff tobacco consumers indicate higher cancer risk levels of 201.7 and 206.5 per 100 000, respectively, which are greater than the population ILTR of dipping tobacco products.