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Most empirical estimates of human elimination kinetics for persistent chemicals reflect apparent elimination half-lives that represent the aggregated effect of intrinsic elimination, ongoing exposure, and changes in body weight. However, estimates of intrinsic elimination at background levels are required for risk assessments for the general population.

To estimate intrinsic human elimination half-lives at background levels for nine polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners, we used a novel approach based on population data.

We used a population pharmacokinetic model to interpret two sets of congener-specific cross-sectional age–concentration biomonitoring data of PCB concentrations measured in lipid and blood samples that were collected from 229 individuals in 1990 and 2003. Our method is novel because it exploits information about changes in concentration in the human …