Grantee Research Project Results
Chemical Prioritization for Children’s Health
EPA Grant Number: FP917796Title: Chemical Prioritization for Children’s Health
Investigators: Smith, Marissa Nicole
Institution: University of Washington
EPA Project Officer: Lee, Sonja
Project Period: September 1, 2015 through August 31, 2018
Project Amount: $132,000
RFA: STAR Graduate Fellowships (2015) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Academic Fellowships
Objective:
This project will focus on developing frameworks and supporting evidence for the prioritization of chemicals found in consumer products. The first objective is to integrate information on the concentration of potentially hazardous chemicals found in consumer products with exposure and toxicity data to develop a framework for prioritizing chemicals for future research and regulatory actions. The framework will be constructed to include intended lifestage and possible exposure routes associated with the consumer product while incorporating high through-put databases, such as ToxCast and ExpoCast. Other objectives include identifying longitudinal trends in the concentration of potentially hazardous chemicals found in children’s products, housedust and concentrations of related urinary metabolites.Approach:
This project will form a collaboration between the University of Washington Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research, Washington State Department of Ecology and Washington State Department of Health to prioritize chemicals found in consumer products for regulatory action and characterize the longitudinal trends in in chemical use for consumer products.
The framework to prioritize chemicals will be constructed based on Washington State’s Children’s Safe Product Act. In response to potentially toxic chemicals found in consumer products, WA Department of Ecology (DOE) implemented The Children’s Safe Product Act (CSPA), requiring that children’s products manufacturers report the concentration range of 66 chemicals of high concern in children’s products sold in WA. In addition, DOE independently tests children’s products for the 66 chemicals of high concern to children. The CSPA database contains over 30,000 records as of September, 2015. One goal of CSPA is to prioritize chemicals for future action. However, prioritization of chemicals of high concern to children from the complex and multilayered CSPA database requires an innovative framework that considers the lifestage-specific toxicity of the chemical, exposure range and potential dose and product use. Integration of the reported information in the database with toxicological information, exposure modeling and biomonitoring data will enhance the potential to prioritize chemicals for further action. Specific databases that will be included in this framework are ToxCast, ExpoCast, Integrated Risk Information System, and other international resources, such as, International Agency for Research on Cancer and the European Union’s REACH associated databases.
The next step of this project will relate priority chemicals identified in the framework to concentrations in house dust and related urinary metabolites over time. As more information about potential toxicity of chemicals becomes available, manufacturers are creating and using alternative chemicals due to consumer feedback or legal requirements. Therefore, understanding how chemical use changes over time is a key part of identifying regulatory priorities. Because the framework will prioritize chemicals based on exposure and toxicity, it is hypothesized that high priority chemicals will be found more frequently in house dust and that their metabolites will be detected in higher concentrations in children’s urine. This aim will access the University of Washington’s Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research (CHC) biorepository which contains house dust collected longitudinally from families in Yakima, Washington. Both the CHC and Washington State Environmental Biomonitoring Survey have urinary samples available that contain metabolites associated with chemicals found in consumer products. Samples have been analyzed for phthalates and metals commonly reported in children’s products. This project will identify longitudin
Expected Results:
One expected output from this project will be chemical prioritizations and recommendations regarding additional information that would be valuable for making future public health decisions for chemicals found in children’s products. This chemical ranking output will be compared to the concentration of consumer product chemicals found in urine and house dust collected from WA residents over time to identify longitudinal trends associated with exposure to chemicals found in consumer productsSupplemental Keywords:
Children's Health, Chemical Prioritization, Consumer Products, High Through-put DatabasesProgress and Final Reports:
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.