Media | Concentration | Comment |
Air: | ||
Outdoors, rural | 1.3 μg/m3 | |
Outdoors, urban | 4 μg/m3 | |
Roadside | 33 μg/m3 | Adjacent to heavy traffic road |
During refuelling | 3700 μg/m3 | No evaporative emission control installed |
During refuelling | 930 μg/m3 | Evaporative emission control installed |
In vehicle5-150 | 44 μg/m3 | 11 Times concentrations of background urban sites |
Indoors, rural no smokers5-151 | 5 μg/m3 | |
Indoors, urban no smokers5-151 | 7 μg/m3 | |
Indoors, 1 or more smokers5-151 | 10 μg/m3 | |
Active smoking | 800 (400) μg/day | Average daily exposure (and retained dose) assuming that 20 cigarettes are smoked a day, each containing 40 μg of benzene and that 50% of inhaled benzene is absorbed |
Other compartments: | ||
Drinking water | 0.64 μg/1 | |
Foodstuffs | 2.0 μg/kg | Average concentrations in food |
Soil | Trace amounts | |
Consumer products | Trace amounts | |
Dermal | Trace amounts |
↵5-150 Concentrations are assumed to be similar while using public and private transport as no information is available for concentrations in buses. If the main form of transport is by rail, this value is likely to over estimate actual concentrations; Leung and Harrison63 have shown levels in trains to be lower than in vehicle concentrations.
↵5-151 Owing to lack of monitoring data in other indoor areas—for example, offices, schools, etc—it is assumed that concentrations in these areas are similar to those reported in the home.