B12-ETHZ: Assessing the relevance of the dust contribution in consumer exposure to substances from consumer products and articles (DustEx)

Description

This project investigates the importance of house dust as a source of human exposure to substances in consumer products and articles. The project will explore the dust pathway in relation to the direct pathways and develop a decision tree as well as guidance on the inclusion versus non-inclusion of the dust pathway into the risk assessment for consumer products and articles. To this end the project will:

– investigate the quantitative relation between product and dust concentrations by 1) mechanistic emission and transfer modelling and 2) conducting transfer experiments between products and dust under controlled conditions

-review and evaluate typical levels of substances in dust with special regard to the factors that determine probability and magnitude of occurrence

-review the factors driving the exposure of consumers to substances in dust and, in particular, investigate the need to distinguish different subpopulations such as children in the general population on the basis of variation in exposure patterns

-develop an integral source-to-dose method to estimate the exposure to a substance in consumer products via house dust

-assess the relative importance of the dust pathway by comparison of dust exposure with direct exposure for a wide range of substance properties, human factors and other exposure determinants

-develop a decision tree and guidance for the (non-)inclusion of the dust pathway into exposure assessments and test decision tree and guidance in at least two case studies with substances that represent different sets of highest influential factors.

The DustEx final report can be downloaded here.

Use the DustEx webtool here.