Bridging Life Cycle and Exposure Ontologies to Enable Integration of Data Streams for Risk-Based Alternatives Assessment
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In recent years, several US States have passed laws requiring manufacturers to evaluate the use of chemicals in consumer products. Some legislation requires manufacturers to perform an alternatives analysis to identify chemical alternatives that reduce impacts to human health and the environment. The US EPA asked the NRC to recommend a framework for evaluating human health and ecological risks associated with new chemical substitutes that would foster an analytical approach for evaluating chemicals by integrating multiple and diverse data streams for a more holistic consideration of potential chemical impacts. The resulting 2014 NAS report, A Framework Guide for the Selection of Chemical Alternatives, includes an increased emphasis on comparative exposure assessment, integration of information across disciplines, and life cycle thinking. To realize the NRC vision and support emerging requirements for alternative assessments, tools are needed to access and exploit the limited available data on chemical manufacture, use, and occurrence for important chemical exposure scenarios and pathways across the product life cycle. Tools for more efficient exposure estimation have advanced, and accessible exposure information has grown significantly in recent years. Data that have been developed and curated for exposure forecasting and for life cycle assessments (LCA) provide a rich source of information to support informed substitution. The goal of this research is to extend and bridge the core ontologies in exposure science and LCA and thereby enable the use of these data to streamline and improve evaluation of safer alternatives. Application of this new ontology bridge to support life cycle human exposure calculations will be demonstrated using the case study of p-dichlorobenzene in air freshener. Integrating information from these separate knowledge domains, and more generally facilitating access to linked open data, will greatly enhance the efficiency of comparative exposure assessment and risk-based alternatives assessment for chemicals in consumer products. In particular, bridging ontologies will allow implementation of workflows tailored to specific alternatives assessment requirements.