Insolubility of Cr2O3in Bioaccessibility Tests Points to Requirement for a New Human Oral Reference Dose for Trivalent Chromium

Bioaccessibility measurements have the potential to improve the accuracy of risk assessments and reduce the potential costs of remediation when they reveal that the solubility of chemicals in a matrix (e.g., soil) differs markedly from that in the critical toxicity study (i.e., the key study from which a toxicological or toxicity reference value is derived). We aimed to apply this approach to a brownfield site contaminated with chromium, and found that the speciation was CrIII, using a combination of alkaline digestion/diphenylcarbazide complexation and X-ray absorption near edge structure analysis. The bioaccessibility of Cr2O3, the compound on which a reference dose for CrIII is based, was substantially lower (