Critical review and probabilistic health hazard assessment of cleaning product ingredients in all-purpose cleaners, dish care products, and laundry care products

Abstract Though numerous chemical ingredients are used in cleaning products, empirical mammalian toxicology information is often limited for many substances. Such limited data inherently presents challenges to environmental health practitioners performing hazard and risk assessments. Probabilistic hazard assessment using chemical toxicity distributions (CTDs) is an alternative approach for assessments of chemicals when toxicity information is lacking. The CTD concept allows for derivation of thresholds of toxicological concern (TTCs) to predict adverse effect thresholds for mammalian species. Unfortunately, comparative health hazard assessment of cleaning product ingredients in common use categories such as all-purpose cleaners (APC), dish care products (DCP) and laundry care products (LCP) has not been well studied. However, APC, DCP, and LCP are used routinely for household and industrial applications, resulting in residential and industrial occupational exposures. Therefore, we reviewed and then examined hazard information (median lethal dose (LD50), lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (LOAEL), and no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL)) from different types of standard mammalian toxicity studies for oral toxicity in the rat model from the unique Cleaning Product Ingredient Safety Initiative mammalian toxicology database. Probabilistic distributions (CTDs) were subsequently constructed using LD50, NOAEL and LOAEL data from a specific toxicity study type for all available ingredients in these three use categories. Based on data availability, product type-specific and chemical category-specific CTDs were also generated and compared. For each CTD, threshold concentrations (TCs) and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) at 1st, 5th, 10th, 50th, 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles were calculated using the log-normal model. To test whether the common default uncertainty factor (UF) approach (e.g., 3, 10) in mammalian health risk assessment provides sufficient protection, UFs were also derived for LOAEL-to-NOAEL and exposure duration (e.g., subchronic-to-chronic) extrapolations. Relationships between CTDs of acute LD50s and sublethal LOAELs/NOAELs were also examined for acute-to-chronic ratio calculations, which may be useful in extreme circumstances. Results from our critical review and meta-analysis appear particularly useful for hazard and risk practitioners when identifying TTCs for ingredients in product use categories, and other chemical classes. This approach can also support development of regulatory data dossiers through read across, chemical substitutions and screening-level health risk assessments when limited or no empirical toxicity information exists for industrial chemicals.