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Development of Product Categories Linking Ingredient Data and Consumer Habits and Practices for Exposure Prediction
Citation:
Isaacs, K., K. Dionisio, K. Phillips, AND P. Price. Development of Product Categories Linking Ingredient Data and Consumer Habits and Practices for Exposure Prediction. 2017 ISES Annual Meeting, Research Triangle Park, NC, October 15 - 19, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The product describes efforts to optimize product categorizations in exposure modeling for efficient parameterization of near-field models that capture population variability.
Description:
Consumer product categorizations in models of near-field (residential) exposures to must provide a bridge between habits and practices information (Why is the product used? Who uses the product? How much do they use? How often do they use it?) and product ingredients (What chemicals are in a product? What fraction of the products in a category contains a specific chemical?) Defining categories that are appropriate for characterizing both types of information are a challenge; the categories must be specific enough to resolve population variability in prevalence, frequency, and mass of use, while also capturing differences in likely chemical constituents. Furthermore, the categories must be sufficiently specific as to allow the assignment of unique exposure scenario assumptions, such as microenvironment of use (e.g., indoors or outdoors), release form (e.g. spray versus liquid), release to various media, removal processes (e.g., rinse-off or wipe-off), and route-specific exposure factors (e.g., dermal surface areas of application, fraction of release in respirable form). While challenging, developing harmonized product categories allows for rapid parameterization of route-specific exposure scenario algorithms for new products and efficient utilization of new data on use or composition. We present here a hierarchical set of Product Use Categories (PUCs) for consumer product formulations that address these requirements; the PUCs are easily cross-walked to other category harmonizations (e.g., those recommended by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). These PUCs are being used to link the consumer product ingredient information in EPA’s Chemical and Products Database to algorithms for scenario-specific use, fate, and exposure in EPA’s Human Exposure Model.
