Technical Report 126

Household Products

Historically steps have been taken to collate and generate habits and practices data for household products. Information, including amount of product used and frequency of use, for consumer products in Western Europe were originally identified and developed under the HERA project in 2002 and further complemented with company data and AISE consumer habits surveys in 2009. AISE developed SCEDs (Specific Consumer Exposure Determinants) in line with the DUCC/CONCAWE guidance to facilitate consumer exposure assessment for a range of consumer cleaning and air care products. The purpose of the SCEDs is to provide more realistic and representative data on product use. Exposure information available for 36 cleaning product categories is available from RIVM in the form of a cleaning products fact sheet (Prud’homme de Lodder et al, 2006). In the US, national usage survey data on household products are available from Westat (1987).

Aggregate exposure is not well established for household care products. Where consideration of aggregate exposure is required then a summing approach is usually adopted. The tools and approaches available in the public domain have not been specifically developed for the purposes of estimating aggregate exposure, and therefore the output is conservative.

Aggregate exposure assessment for household products requires information on the chemical concentration used across product categories. The availability of such data in the public domain is limited as information on specific inclusion values is typically proprietary. Where chemical concentrations are quoted for example, Household Products Database, Chemical/Product Categories Database (CPCat) then ranges are often quoted or maximum inclusion values and data are often only available for a limited number of chemicals in a limited number of products.

A major challenge in estimating aggregate exposure is obtaining information on how a chemical is used. Understanding the occurrence of a chemical in household products can lead to a significant refinement in the estimated aggregate exposure. Very limited data can be obtained from market survey databases such as Mintel and Codecheck; however, the available information may not be representative of the market due to a lack of legal obligation to label products. In addition, some systems are not well maintained leading to the availability of out of date information.

A key enabler in the development of realistic aggregate exposure estimates is the incorporation of co-use data. Such data are not publicly available for household products and therefore conservative assumptions are employed such as, all product types containing the chemical are used by the consumer simultaneously.