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Suspect Screening of Chemicals in Household Products Containing Recycled Material
Citation:
Lowe, C., K. Phillips, K. Favela, A. Yau, A. Jackson, J. Wambaugh, J. Sobus, AND K. Isaacs. Suspect Screening of Chemicals in Household Products Containing Recycled Material. ToxForum Low-Level Exposure Meeting, Brussels, BELGIUM, May 20 - 22, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This poster depicts novel methods for identifying potential exposure sources in consumer products using novel high-throughput analytical methods.
Description:
Recycled materials are found in many modern consumer products as part of a circular economy. Although these products are generally regarded as being comparable to those made from non-recycled (virgin) materials, their difference in chemical formulation is often unknown to the consumer. A suspect screening analysis was applied to 210 unique products (154 recycled and 56 virgin) across 7 product categories including plastic children's toys, housing construction materials, paper products, and other household products, to rapidly characterize chemical content. Two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-TOFMS) analysis was performed on extracted samples from each product. 1299 unique tentatively identified and standard-confirmed chemicals were determined by comparing spectra from the extracted samples to the National Institute of Standards and Technology 2014 spectral library (NIST 2014 v.2.2.07-2014). A total of 1,042 chemicals were tentatively identified in recycled materials and 677 in virgin materials. Identified chemicals are characterized using functional use information from EPA’s CPDat database and chemical taxonomies obtained using Classyfire, a public automated classification tool. Recycled materials contained larger numbers of flame retardants, fragrances, colorants, in addition to chemicals with other functional uses. Unsupervised learning via hierarchical clustering analysis was performed in both chemical and product dimensions to identify groups of chemicals potentially associated with unique exposure sources (e.g., recycling processes). The chemical/product clusters identified in this study (chemical fingerprints) can be used in future studies to parameterize existing exposure models or identify novel exposure pathways which are currently neglected in product exposure assessments.
