High Throughput Risk and Impact Screening of Chemicals in Consumer Products

Abstract

The ubiquitous presence of more than 80,000 chemicals in thousands of consumer products used on a daily basis stresses the need for screening a broader set of chemicals than the traditional well‐studied suspect chemicals. This high‐throughput screening combines stochastic chemical‐product usage with mass balance‐based exposure models and toxicity data to prioritize risks associated with household products. We first characterize product usage using the stochastic SHEDS‐HT model and chemical content in common household products from the CPDat database, the chemical amounts applied daily varying over more than six orders of magnitude, from mg to kg. We then estimate multi‐pathways near‐ and far‐field exposures for 5,500 chemical‐product combinations, applying an extended USEtox model to calculate product intake fractions ranging from 0.001 to ∼1, and exposure doses varying over more than nine orders of magnitude. Combining exposure doses with chemical‐specific dose–responses and reference doses shows that risks can be substantial for multiple home maintenance products, such as paints or paint strippers, for some home‐applied pesticides, leave‐on personal care products, and cleaning products. Sixty percent of the chemical‐product combinations have hazard quotients exceeding 1, and 9% of the combinations have lifetime cancer risks exceeding 10−4. Population‐level impacts of household products ingredients can be substantial, representing 5 to 100 minutes of healthy life lost per day, with users’ exposures up to 103 minutes per day. To address this issue, present mass balance‐based models are already able to provide exposure estimates for both users and populations. This screening study shows large variations of up to 10 orders of magnitude in impact across both chemicals and product combinations, demonstrating that prioritization based on hazard only is not acceptable, since it would neglect orders of magnitude variations in both product usage and exposure that need to be quantified. To address this, the USEtox suite of mass balance‐based models is already able to provide exposure estimates for thousands of product‐chemical combinations for both users and populations. The present study calls for more scrutiny of most impacting chemical‐product combinations, fully ensuring from a regulatory perspective consumer product safety for high‐end users and using protective measures for users.

Exposure and toxicity characterization of chemical emissions and chemicals in products: global recommendations and implementation in USEtox

“…When translating the functional unit into daily use, we would arrive at impacts per individual usage per person. With that, our framework can also be applied in chemical exposure assessment and risk prioritization frameworks (Fantke and Illner 2019;Fantke et al 2020a;Jolliet et al 2021).…”

“…Such improvements are mainly related to increasing the spatiotemporal and population-level resolution of impact estimates and extending the coverage and quality of substance, exposure, and dose-response information (Fantke et al 2018a,b;Kirchhübel & Fantke 2019;Crenna et al 2020;Gentil et al 2020;Holmquist et al 2020). Furthermore, a series of recent studies has demonstrated that environmentally mediated exposure from chemical emissions is less important for overall exposure than consumer exposure to chemical constituents in products (Shin et al 2015;Ernstoff et al 2016;Csiszar et al 2017;Ring et al 2019;Fantke et al 2020b;Jolliet et al 2021). Hence, including pathways related to chemicals in consumer products into toxicity characterization frameworks is crucial for considering all relevant pathways.…”

Introduction to Special Issue on Risk Assessment, Economic Evaluation, and Decisions

“…and a more sophisticated approach to regulatory decision making in the face of this uncertainty. These issues are common to many of the papers and several (e.g., Chiu & Paoli, 2021; Jolliet et al., 2021; Rheinberger, 2021; von Stackelberg & Williams, 2021) point the way to future progress.…”

“…The three papers in the fifth session applied risk assessment and economic valuation to health risks. One estimated the costs of developing a complex therapeutic medical device (Sertkaya, Jessup, & DeVries, 2019), a second considered chemicals in consumer products (Jolliet, Huang, Hou, & Fantke, 2021), and a third estimated the benefits of decreasing childhood lead exposure (Zhou & Grosse, 2019). The sixth session returned to air pollution, focusing on interventions to reduce exposure.…”

“…Jolliet et al. (2021), “High Throughput Risk and Impact Screening of Chemicals in Consumer Products,” present and apply a framework for screening health risks from the 80,000 chemicals contained in consumer products. Their method combines data from product sales, mass‐balance‐based exposure modeling, and dose–response functions based on chemical‐specific toxicity data such as RfDs and TD50s.…”