Assessment of Application and Post-Application Exposures to Chemicals Released from Consumer Products Principles and Case Studies. Gary K. Whitmyre, Jeffrey H. Driver, and Michael E. Ginevan, Technology Sciences Group, Inc. 1101 17th Street, NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036
During the past 15 years, a number of studies, most notably the TEAM studies sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have demonstrated that residential air is often a more significant source of exposure to various chemicals (e.g., volatile organic compounds, or VOCs) than outdoor air. Many of the compounds of interest in residential air are present in consumer products that are used in and around the residence. Recent studies have investigated the relationship between application/post-application activities and exposures to a variety of chemicals in consumer products. While the resulting exposures are likely to be low in most cases, nonetheless there is a need to characterize these exposures. For certain chemicals such as pesticides, post-application exposures in particular may require characterization of various exposure pathways/routes and subpopulations to fully understand the magnitude of exposure associated with consumer uses of these chemicals. Issues to consider when performing such assessments will be discussed, along with several case studies that illustrate the range of approaches that can be taken, including use of body-burden modelling for intermittent exposures, use of indoor air modeling tools, incorporation of time-activity data, consideration of the form of the airborne concentration dissipation curve in determining post-application exposures, and use and adjustment of emissions/concentration data for surrogate compounds to obtain an emission rate/airborne level for the compound of interest.