The seven chemicals evaluated included two natural compounds (caffeine and citric acid), a degradation metabolite (glycolic acid), and four synthetic chemicals: ethylene glycol, dibutyl phthalate, benziothiazolinone (BIT), which is also an antimicrobial, and 1,2,4,6,9,10-hexabromocyclododecane (HBDC), which is designated as persistent and bioaccumulative by the European Union.
“As marketplace demand for ‘greener’ products increases, many retailers and brand owners are seeking ways to determine the safety of certain chemicals used in consumer products,” said Julie Panko, principal health scientist with Cardno ChemRisk and co-author of the study. “This project explored one factor in this emerging trend of product safety evaluation — whether leading hazard assessment tools would provide similar results, or, if there were different results, why these differences occurred. The results affirm what ACC and regulators have known for decades: to judge a product’s safety, a chemical hazard analysis needs to be put into the context of how the product is used, and by whom.”
The results show a wide variety of hazard categorizations for the same chemical—ranging from little or no hazard/toxicity to very high hazard/toxicity. For example, caffeine was ranked by two of the tools as a “low” hazard, as a “moderate hazard by one tool, as a “high” hazard by three tools, and as a “very high” hazard by two of the tools.
The authors indicated that the different results for the same chemicals were due to variations in: 1) the endpoints each tool considered for evaluation; 2) how each tool weighed the relevance of specific endpoints; 3) the sources of information the tools developer used to gather information; and 4) how each tool treated gaps in available data. Thus, the study found that the outcome of a hazard tool assessment is highly dependent on the tool selected for the screening.
“A list-based or hazard-only approach does not fully address whether a chemical ingredient presents health or safety issues when it is used. The inherent hazard of a chemical ingredient is only one aspect to consider when making informed decisions,” said Pamela Spencer, scientific director at Dow Chemical and co-author of the study. “Only by considering how a product is used in combination with the ingredient hazards can one determine product safety.”
The American Chemistry Council is in the process of conducting a follow-up demonstration study that evaluates chemical ingredients in the context of the whole products and its intended use. A paper publishing the results of this analysis is under development.
