Dataset Information

Pandemic products and volatile chemical emissions.

ABSTRACT: The recent pandemic (COVID-19) has seen a sweeping and surging use of products intended to clean and disinfect, such as air sprays, hand sanitizers, and surface cleaners, many of which contain fragrance. However, exposure to fragranced cleaning products has been associated with adverse effects on human health. Products can emit a range of volatile chemicals, including some classified as hazardous, but relatively few ingredients are disclosed to the public. Thus, relatively little is known about the specific emissions from these products. This study investigates the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from "pandemic products" that are being used frequently and extensively in society. In addition, among these emissions, this study identifies potentially hazardous compounds, compares so-called green and regular versions of products, and examines whether ingredients are disclosed to the public. Using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, 26 commonly used pandemic products, including 13 regular and 13 so-called green versions, were analyzed for their volatile emissions. Product types included hand sanitizers, air disinfectants, multipurpose cleaners, and handwashing soap. All products were fragranced. The analyses found the products collectively emitted 399 VOCs with 127 VOCs classified as potentially hazardous. All products emitted potentially hazardous compounds. Comparing regular products and green products, no significant difference was found in the emissions of the most prevalent compounds. Further, among the 399 compounds emitted, only 4% of all VOCs and 11% of potentially hazardous VOCs were disclosed on any product label or safety data sheet. This study reveals that pandemic products can generate volatile emissions that could pose risks to health, that could be unrecognized, and that could be reduced, such as by using fragrance-free versions of products.

SUBMITTER: Steinemann A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7452613 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Pandemic products and volatile chemical emissions.

Steinemann Anne A Nematollahi Neda N Rismanchi Behzad B Goodman Nigel N Kolev Spas D SD

Air quality, atmosphere, & health 20200827 1

The recent pandemic (COVID-19) has seen a sweeping and surging use of products intended to clean and disinfect, such as air sprays, hand sanitizers, and surface cleaners, many of which contain fragrance. However, exposure to fragranced cleaning products has been associated with adverse effects on human health. Products can emit a range of volatile chemicals, including some classified as hazardous, but relatively few ingredients are disclosed to the public. Thus, relatively little is known about ...[more]

PMID: 32874372

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Project description:Volatile chemical products (VCPs) are an increasingly important source of anthropogenic reactive organic carbon (ROC) emissions. Among these sources are everyday items, such as personal care products, general cleaners, architectural coatings, pesticides, adhesives, and printing inks. Here, we develop VCPy, a new framework to model organic emissions from VCPs throughout the United States, including spatial allocation to regional and local scales. Evaporation of a species from a VCP mixture in the VCPy framework is a function of the compound-specific physiochemical properties that govern volatilization and the timescale relevant for product evaporation. We introduce two terms to describe these processes: evaporation timescale and use timescale. Using this framework, predicted national per capita organic emissions from VCPs are 9.5 kg per person per year (6.4 kg C per person per year) for 2016, which translates to 3.05 Tg (2.06 Tg C), making VCPs a dominant source of anthropogenic organic emissions in the United States. Uncertainty associated with this framework and sensitivity to select parameters were characterized through Monte Carlo analysis, resulting in a 95 % confidence interval of national VCP emissions for 2016 of 2.61-3.53 Tg (1.76-2.38 Tg C). This nationwide total is broadly consistent with the U.S. EPA's 2017 National Emission Inventory (NEI); however, county-level and categorical estimates can differ substantially from NEI values. VCPy predicts higher VCP emissions than the NEI for approximately half of all counties, with 5 % of all counties having greater than 55 % higher emissions. Categorically, application of the VCPy framework yields higher emissions for personal care products (150 %) and paints and coatings (25 %) when compared to the NEI, whereas pesticides (-54 %) and printing inks (-13 %) feature lower emissions. An observational evaluation indicates emissions of key species from VCPs are reproduced with high fidelity using the VCPy framework (normalized mean bias of -13 % with r =0.95). Sector-wide, the effective secondary organic aerosol yield and maximum incremental reactivity of VCPs are 5.3 % by mass and 1.58 gO3 g-1, respectively, indicating VCPs are an important, and likely to date underrepresented, source of secondary pollution in urban environments.

Project description:PurposeReducing chemical pressure on human and environmental health is an integral part of the global sustainability agenda. Guidelines for deriving globally applicable, life cycle based indicators are required to consistently quantify toxicity impacts from chemical emissions as well as from chemicals in consumer products. In response, we elaborate the methodological framework and present recommendations for advancing near-field/far-field exposure and toxicity characterization, and for implementing these recommendations in the scientific consensus model USEtox.MethodsAn expert taskforce was convened by the Life Cycle Initiative hosted by UN Environment to expand existing guidance for evaluating human toxicity impacts from exposure to chemical substances. This taskforce evaluated advances since the original release of USEtox. Based on these advances, the taskforce identified two major aspects that required refinement, namely integrating near-field and far-field exposure and improving human dose-response modeling. Dedicated efforts have led to a set of recommendations to address these aspects in an update of USEtox, while ensuring consistency with the boundary conditions for characterizing life cycle toxicity impacts and being aligned with recommendations from agencies that regulate chemical exposure. The proposed framework was finally tested in an illustrative rice production and consumption case study.Results and discussionOn the exposure side, a matrix system is proposed and recommended to integrate far-field exposure from environmental emissions with near-field exposure from chemicals in various consumer product types. Consumer exposure is addressed via submodels for each product type to account for product characteristics and exposure settings. Case study results illustrate that product-use related exposure dominates overall life cycle exposure. On the effect side, a probabilistic dose-response approach combined with a decision tree for identifying reliable points of departure is proposed for non-cancer effects, following recent guidance from the World Health Organization. This approach allows for explicitly considering both uncertainty and human variability in effect factors. Factors reflecting disease severity are proposed to distinguish cancer from non-cancer effects, and within the latter discriminate reproductive/developmental and other non-cancer effects. All proposed aspects have been consistently implemented into the original USEtox framework.ConclusionsThe recommended methodological advancements address several key limitations in earlier approaches. Next steps are to test the new characterization framework in additional case studies and to close remaining research gaps. Our framework is applicable for evaluating chemical emissions and product-related exposure in life cycle assessment, chemical alternatives assessment and chemical substitution, consumer exposure and risk screening, and high-throughput chemical prioritization.

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Pandemic products and volatile chemical emissions.

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Pandemic products and volatile chemical emissions.

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