Approaches to Human Risk Assessment and Risk Management for Cleaning Products

Risk assessment and management procedures applicable to evaluating cleaning product safety are described. The four phases of the risk assessment process described are hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Risk management utilizes the results of a risk assessment to assist in the alleviation of risks. Determination of the potential toxicity of cleaning products occurs during the hazard identification stage using data from tests on similar compounds or experiments run specifically for the material in question. If materials are predicted to elicit effects, a dose-response assessment will identify the levels of exposure that will not initiate the effects. Exposure levels are calculated to determine the anticipated human exposure. Human exposure and the dose-response assessments are integrated to characterize the health risks, if any, due to exposure. Finally, any potential risks from the products will be mitigated so that the products can be safely used. Although this is a widely used process, risk assessment is as yet an inexact science, since it is generally not possible to assign precise numerical values of increased probability of harm. To address this issue, risk assessors use strategies that tend, at each step of the process, to overestimate risk, due to compounding of conservative assumptions often used in risk assessment. The degree to which the true risk is overestimated is unknown, and likely varies from ingredient to ingredient.