Guidance

Benzo(a)pyrene or PAHs: health effects and toxicology

Information on benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), an indicator species for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), for use in responding to chemical incidents.

• From: UK Health Security Agency
• Published: 1 July 2014
• Last updated: 20 August 2025
  Show all updates

  1. 20 August 2025

     Updated the 'PAHs and cancer' section of general information.

  2. 3 February 2025

     The content of the Incident Management document has been updated. The General Information and Toxicological Overview pages have undergone a HTML format update – the content within these pages has remained unchanged.

  3. 7 August 2018

     Updated incident management guidance.

  4. 1 July 2014

     First published.

Documents

Benzo[a]pyrene or PAHs: general information

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Benzo[a]pyrene or PAHs: incident management

Ref: GOV-18093

PDF, 258 KB, 19 pages

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Benzo[a]pyrene or PAHs: toxicological overview

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Details

These documents provide information on the health effects of exposure, the chemical’s toxicity and material for responding to a chemical incident.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of several hundred chemically-related environmentally persistent organic compounds.

Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) acts as an indicator species for PAH contamination. Most of the available data refers to this compound.

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