Case Study 1: Triclosan in Personal Care Products and Cosmetics

Consumer exposure to triclosan was studied in considerable detail in a previous CEFIC-LRI B7 report (Bakker et al, 2014). The goal in this case study is not to duplicate this work or to present alternative estimates of consumer exposure to triclosan; rather it is a study of how to systemically refine exposure estimates to arrive at a high tier estimate of exposure, starting from a conservative estimate and then introducing more data and analysis techniques in order to improve the estimate of exposure.

The starting point is an opinion on the safety of triclosan by the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS), which uses a tier 1 type assessment of consumer exposure by deterministically summing exposure from individual products (SCCS, 2012). In order to refine the estimate in this opinion, a number of different data sources and models are introduced in a systematic manner. This is with a view to both providing guidance on how to perform a higher-tier exposure assessment when required, and also how to best use available data in order to estimate exposure for a given purpose.