The overall aim of this work-package is to design and implement methodologies and tools to assess risks and health impacts due to aggregate human exposure to chemicals in consumer products.

Assessments will be concerned with assessing impacts of different policy options or scenarios.

• Aggregate exposure: The combined exposure of an individual (or defined population) to a specific agent or stressor via relevant routes, pathways, and sources.
• Aggregate risk: The risk resulting from aggregate exposure to a single agent or stressor.

An inventory of tools and methodologies that aggregate exposure and a discussion of their applicability to assess human aggregate exposure to chemicals in consumer products has been performed: Delmaar JE, Engelen JGM van. Aggregating human exposure to chemicals: An overview of tools and methodologies. RIVM Report 630700001 (2006). The conclusion of this report is that there is not an available tool today that fully implements the aggregation of human exposure to chemicals in consumer products. In order to perform such an assessment, a tool needs to be developed.

Methodological steps to assess the human health impacts of a policy measure dealing with a substance present in various consumer products:

1. Collect relevant toxicity data
2. Collect relevant exposure data to describe scenarios before and after the policy measure
3. Develop exposure profiles, before and after the policy measure
4. Collect data for determining how many people are represented by each exposure profile and assess the target population
5. Assess consumer exposure under each profile (in a way that is as realistic as possible) and using an appropriate model (such as ConsExpo – www.consexpo.nl). The aggregation of the exposures will be performed by using another programme.
6. Validate, where possible, the results of the modelling by comparing them with (bio)-monitoring data
7. Conduct country-specific exposure assessments if possible (France, UK, Serbia, Finland, The Netherlands)
8. Define the relevant health indicators/toxic endpoints (acute, chronic, or acute and chronic)
9. Assess consumer aggregate risks, and where possible, health impacts, under each profile
10. Review and evaluate the experience of the assessment for a refined second pass assessment
11. Perform a sensitivity analysis – This step will show clearly which part of the assessment can be refined in the second pass assessment.
12. Draw up a proposal for encountered problems in the assessment (feedback results to the sub-project dealing with methodology, refine the assessment, draw up a proposal to perform an EU-wide survey in order to collect missing data, or apply alternative methods, such as expert elicitation)

This methodology will be applied and evaluated for four chemical substances (one phthalate, two volatile organic compounds and one organophosphate pesticide) selected on the basis of their wide-spread use in consumer products, on the availability of exposure data and of toxicity information and on possible national interests.

1. U.S. EPA. Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington Office, Washington, DC, EPA/600/P-02/001F, 2003.