Passive sampling methods to determine household and personal care product use

Abstract

Traditionally, use of household and personal care products has been collected through questionnaires, which is very time consuming, a burden on participants, and prone to recall bias. As part of the SUPERB Project (Study of Use of Products and Exposure-Related Behaviors), a novel platform was developed using bar codes to quickly and reliably determine what household and personal care products people have in their homes and determine the amount used over a 1-week period. We evaluated the acceptability and feasibility of our methodology in a longitudinal field study that included 47 California households, 30 with young children and 17 with an older adult. Acceptability was defined by refusal rates; feasibility was evaluated in terms of readable bar codes, useful product information in our database for all readable barcodes, and ability to find containers at both the start and end of the week. We found 63% of personal care products and 87% of the household care products had readable barcodes with 47% and 41% having sufficient data for product identification, respectively and secondly, the amount used could be determined most of the time. We present distributions for amount used by product category and compare inter-and intra-person variability. In summary, our method appears to be appropriate, acceptable, and useful for gathering information related to potential exposures stemming from the use of personal and household care products. A very low drop-out rate suggests that this methodology can be useful in longitudinal studies of exposure to household and personal care products.

Environment and asthma in adults

“…Home environments might be major sources of aero-contaminants and it has been suggested that VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) should be measured at home to better evaluate domestic exposure to cleaning products and potentially to cosmetics, which were recently suggested as a potential risk factor for asthma and allergic diseases [69,[137][138][139]. In recent surveys, home visits using bar codes of various products were performed and may provide objective tools to validate or improve questionnaires used in epidemiological surveys [140,141]. It would be important to collect more precise information regarding specific products used at home, the type of presentation (cream, liquid or spray; aerosol with or without gases) and the way they are used including ventilation in the house, which can influence exposure [96].…”

Development of a bar code-based exposure assessment method to evaluate occupational exposure to disinfectants and cleaning products: a pilot study

“…To our knowledge, only one study used bar codes to describe the use of cleaning products at home 21. The use of this method to assess occupational exposures has never been reported.…”

“…In our study, we used the camera of a smartphone to detect bar codes of disinfectants/cleaning products. The use of bar codes was shown to be reliable by Bennett et al 21 in obtaining detailed information on domestic products. Furthermore, some studies suggested that self-administered questionnaire via an application does not affect data collection, can improve data completeness20 and validate the use of the application to collect data 36…”

“…A new assessment method based on the use of bar codes has been proposed to determine the type of cleaning and personal care products used at home 21. To our knowledge this method has never been applied to evaluate occupational exposure to cleaning products.…”

Assessing exposure of young children to common endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the home environment: a review and commentary of the questionnaire-based approach

“…In addition, it is difficult, if not impossible, to assess average use of some products through questionnaires, particularly when their use is intermittent, and when the questionnaire is not answered by all adult residents in the home (135,136). Alternative monitoring approaches (e.g., using bar-code scanners and taking an inventory) have been shown to be acceptable by participants in longitudinal studies, but require more resources and may be more intrusive (136,137 Use of proxy-respondents, which is necessary when assessing young children's exposure, may introduce error into the questionnaire-based approach. For example, Riederer et al compared the reporting of pesticide use in NHANES by self-reporting adults and those who were serving as proxy-respondents for children (72).…”