Dermal Uptake of 18 Dilute Aqueous Chemicals: In Vivo Disappearance-Method Measures Greatly Exceed In Vitro-Based Predictions

Average rates of total dermal uptake (K_up) from short-term (e.g., bathing) contact with dilute aqueous organic chemicals (DAOCs) are typically estimated from steady-state in vitro diffusion-cell measures of chemical permeability (K_p) through skin into receptor solution. Widely used (“PCR-vitro”) methods estimate K_up by applying diffusion theory to increase K_p predictions made by a physico-chemical regression (PCR) model that was fit to a large set of K_p measures. Here, K_up predictions for 18 DAOCs made by three PCR-vitro models (EPA, NIOSH, and MH) were compared to previous in vivo measures obtained by methods unlikely to underestimate K_up. A new PCR model fit to all 18 measures is accurate to within approximately threefold (r= 0.91, p < 10⁻⁵), but the PCR-vitro predictions (r > 0.63) all tend to underestimate the K_up measures by mean factors (UF, and p value for testing UF = 1) of 10 (EPA, p < 10⁻⁶), 11 (NIOSH, p < 10⁻⁸), and 6.2 (MH, p= 0.018). For all three PCR-vitro models, log(UF) correlates negatively with molecular weight (r²= 0.31 to 0.84, p= 0.017 to < 10⁻⁶) but not with log(vapor pressure) as an additional predictor (p > 0.05), so vapor pressure appears not to explain the significant in vivo/PCR-vitro discrepancy. Until this discrepancy is explained, careful in vivo measures of K_up should be obtained for more chemicals, the expanded in vivo database should be compared to in vitro-based predictions, and in vivo data should be considered in assessing aqueous dermal exposure and its uncertainty.