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Stochastic modeling of near-field exposure to parabens in personal care products

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 27, pages 152–159 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Exposure assessment is a key step in determining risks to chemicals in consumer goods, including personal care products (PCPs). Exposure models can be used to estimate exposures to chemicals in the absence of biomonitoring data and as tools in chemical risk prioritization and screening. We apply a PCP exposure model based on the product intake fraction (PiF), which is defined as the fraction of chemical in a product that is taken in by the exposed population, to estimate chemical intake based on physicochemical properties and PCP usage characteristics. The PiF can be used to estimate route and pathway-specific exposures during both the use and disposal stages of a product. As a case study, we stochastically quantified population level exposures to parabens in PCPs, and compared estimates with biomarker values. We estimated exposure based on the usage of PCPs in the female US population, taking into account population variability, product usage characteristics, paraben occurrence in PCPs and the PiF. Intakes were converted to urine levels and compared with National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) biomonitoring data. Results suggest that for parabens, chemical exposure during product use is substantially larger than environmentally mediated exposure after product disposal. Modeled urine concentrations reflect well the NHANES variation of three orders of magnitude across parabens for the 50th, 75th, 90th, and 95th percentiles and were generally in good agreement with measurements, when taking uncertainty into account. This study presents an approach to estimate multi-pathway exposure to chemicals in PCPs and can be used as a tool within exposure-based screening of chemicals as well in higher tier exposure estimates.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Barbara Wetmore (Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences) for the clearance values and Jacqueline Biesterbos and Nel Roeleveld (Radboud University) for product usage data. Funding was provided by the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, the Dow Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sustainability to SAC and the Long Range Research Initiative of the American Chemistry Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Susan A Csiszar & Olivier Jolliet

  2. Quantitative Sustainability Assessment Division, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

    Alexi S Ernstoff & Peter Fantke

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  1. Susan A Csiszar
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Correspondence to Susan A Csiszar.

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Csiszar, S., Ernstoff, A., Fantke, P. et al. Stochastic modeling of near-field exposure to parabens in personal care products. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 27, 152–159 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2015.85

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