Ecological Risk Assessment of Personal Care Product Ingredients

Due to advances in analytical chemistry that has allowed for the measurement of low levels of some personal care product ingredients in the environment, these compounds are now being considered as “emerging contaminants” even though they have been in commerce for many years. The measurement of these compounds has sparked an interest in their potential environmental risk. To address this concern, an overview of procedures for assessing the environmental risk of personal care product ingredients will be presented. Because the primary disposal route of personal care products is via municipal wastewater collection and treatment systems, the historical methodologies used for laundry and cleaning product ingredients will be applied to assess the aquatic risk of personal care product ingredients. This approach will include a discussion on quantitative structure activity relationships (QSAR), ecotoxicity, environmental fate, exposure modeling, environmental monitoring and ecoepidemiology. These techniques for predicting exposure and effect concentrations will be illustrated with several product ingredients.