Combined exposure pattern of household products used by consumers

To accurately evaluate the health risk of consumers from the combined effects of substances in multiple used household products, data on co-use and multiple-use habits and practices of consumers necessarily constitute a fundamental element of the exposure assessment process. To understand the current combined use pattern of household products, reliable combined exposure data were investigated. Eleven household product categories were selected and divided by 40 product use purposes. This approach analyzed the information of single-use, co-use, and multiple-use patterns of the 11 products at home collected from 6,397 respondents. All possible multiple combinations of products and product usage categories were analyzed. As expected, the participants used several products and product usage categories simultaneously. The data yielded important personalized combined exposure patterns that can be used in exposure assessment for hazardous substances that are used as ingredients of products. Furthermore, this study investigated the combined exposure amount of 11 products to user at home. Aggregate exposure amount per month to user was calculated to be 7479.6 g/month (six products in 1st survey) and 4056 g/month (five products in 2nd survey). This study provides valuable information on the individual use patterns and circumstances of household product use by consumers. Key words: Web-survey, combined exposure, household products, multiple-use patterns, combined exposure amount.