Assessing Human Exposure to Chemicals in Materials, Products and Articles: The International Risk Management Landscape for Phthalates
Risk-based chemical safety assessments are increasingly being conducted to support chemical management decisions and informed substitution to protect public health. Rapid evaluation and prioritization of large numbers of chemicals used in materials, products, and other indoor articles has become a major focus of chemical risk management strategies. Internationally, although a shared understanding of the value of rapid risk-based evaluations appears to be emerging, implementation strategies and associated management decisions vary from one agency and jurisdiction to another. This paper highlights the international chemical risk management landscape focusing on phthalates as an example, and reviews how phthalate exposure assessments have been performed, resulting at times in different decisions based on the application of scientific information within different policy contexts. In general, the need for efficient and effective risk-based assessment approaches is driving increased needs for high-quality exposure data and validated, mechanistic exposure models. Further development of mechanistic models and related parameters will reduce uncertainties in exposure estimates and support scientific risk-based evaluations of chemical/product combinations for a variety of decisions.