A model for estimating the daily dietary intake of a substance from food-contact articles: styrene from polystyrene food-contact polymers.

An approach has been developed to estimate the exposure of consumers to styrene from polystyrene food-contact articles which incorporates published literature on the diffusion of styrene through polymeric materials and industry survey data on uses of polystyrene in food-contact applications. The approach has been shown to be quite practical and has yielded an exposure estimate of 3 ppb (9 micrograms/day) styrene, on average, in the daily diet of people in the United States. This value compares reasonably well with the value of 1-4 micrograms/day for residents of the United Kingdom in 1983. The value is also four orders of magnitude less than the acceptable daily intake calculated by the Styrene Information and Research Center.