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Kevin Marsee,¹ Tracey J. Woodruff,²* Daniel A. Axelrad,³ Antonia M. Calafat,⁴ and Shanna H. Swan⁵

¹Joint Medical Program, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA; ²Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, San Francisco, California, USA; ³Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA; ⁴Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; ⁵Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA

Abstract
Phthalate diesters have been shown to be developmental and reproductive toxicants in animal studies. A recent epidemiologic study showed certain phthalates to be significantly associated with reduced anogenital distance in human male infants, the first evidence of subtle developmental effects in human male infants exposed prenatally to phthalates. We used two previously published methods to estimate the daily phthalate exposures for the four phthalates whose urinary metabolites were statistically significantly associated with developmental effects in the 214 mother-infant pairs [di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) , diethyl phthalate (DEP) , butylbenzyl phthalate (BBzP) , diisobutyl phthalate (DiBP) ] and for another important phthalate [di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) ]. We estimated the median and 95th percentile of daily exposures to DBP to be 0.99 and 2.68 µg/kg/day, respectively ; for DEP, 6.64 and 112.3 µg/kg/day ; for BBzP, 0.50 and 2.47 µg/kg/day ; and for DEHP, 1.32 and 9.32 µg/kg/day. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reference doses for these chemicals are 100 (DBP) , 800 (DEP) , 200 (BBzP) , and 20 (DEHP) µg/kg/day. The median and 95th percentile exposure estimates for the phthalates associated with reduced anogenital distance in the study population are substantially lower than current U.S. EPA reference doses for these chemicals and could be informative to any updates of the hazard assessments and risk assessments for these chemicals. Key words: anogenital distance, butylbenzyl phthalate, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, diisobutyl phthalate, exposure estimates, reference dose. Environ Health Perspect 114:805-809 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8663 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 2 February 2006]

Address correspondence to T.J. Woodruff, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California St., Suite 265, San Francisco, CA 94118 USA. Telephone: (415) 476-1890. E-mail: tracey.woodruff@ucsf.edu

*Currently on sabbatical to Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, USA.

The views in this article represent those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 15 September 2005 ; accepted 2 February 2005.

An erratum was published in Environ HealthPerspect 115:A70 (2007) .