Integrated risk assessment of household chemicals and consumer products: Addressing concerns about triclosan

✍ Scribed by Donald Mackay; Lawrence Barnthouse

• Publisher: Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 71 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1551-3777
• DOI: 10.1002/ieam.73

✦ Synopsis

THE CURRENT CHALLENGE

Interest and concern about the human health and environmental impacts of chemicals in personal care products and other consumer products that are released to the environment through wastewater treatment systems are a continuing issue. Examples include detergents and other cleaning agents, solvents, household pesticides, fragrances, pharmaceuticals, biocides, and antimicrobials such as triclosan, the subject of a set of 3 articles that appear in this issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (Bock et al. 2010;Fuchsman et al. 2010;Lyndall et al. 2010). Large quantities of environmental data have been generated and published by scientists from industrial, regulatory, and academic organizations with widely different perspectives concerning the fate and effects of these products and their ingredients. The ''big picture'' integrating sources, fate, and effects of these materials on human health and ecosystems can be clouded by the sheer volume of the observations, many of which may be in apparent or real conflict. Careful and comprehensive critical reviews that seek to integrate the available information into a coherent whole can be invaluable by providing manufacturers, consumers, and regulatory agencies with objective syntheses of the scientific facts.

The 3 articles presented in this issue of IEAM addressing the risks posed by the use of triclosan in personal care products and other consumer products can serve as a template for similar integrated comprehensive assessments of other chemicals. Such assessments require certain key information, including:

Chemical identity and relevant physicochemical properties that determine environmental partitioning and potential for food web transfer and biomagnification Chemical reactivity or degradability in relevant media ranging from the atmosphere to biosolids to organisms ''Mode of entry'' into the environment, in this case in water effluents destined mainly for wastewater treatment (WWT) Fate of the chemical within a treatment plant, including degradation and partitioning between biosolids and treated wastewater Quantities used and how these vary both regionally and nationally Key characteristics of receiving environments, and how these vary regionally and nationally From this information, it is usually possible to identify the key environmental pathways of the chemical, hence the processes that control levels in potentially affected environments, and the variability of those levels as functions of key environmental and demographic characteristics. Mass balance models that simulate the fate and transport of the substance are important components of any such assessments.