Comparative Risk Assessment of 19 Cleaning Products. C. Flessner, L. Randecker, and R. Fares, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 401 M St. SW, Washington, DC 20460; and Versar Inc., 6850 Versar Center, P.O. Box 1549, Springfield, VA 22151
In 1993, members of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (EPA/OPPT) and the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service (GSA/PBS) began a joint effort to select environmentally preferable cleaning products. As a part of this effort, the OPPT agreed to assess 19 products the PBS used in a federal courthouse and rank them by relative health and ecological risk. In addition to the risk ranking, this project also ranked the products by hazard and compared the results of the two ranking methods. These hazard and risk rankings were done using screening risk assessment methods commonly used by the OPPT for other existing chemicals and new chemicals. These methods consist of hazard analysis of the product ingredients, integrated with estimates of exposure to each ingredient to calculate that ingredient's risk. Subsequently, each product risk was characterized by its highest risk ingredient, or by a combination of risks, if appropriate.