Toxicology of Industrial Compounds

364 CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN SAFETY ASSESSMENT
3.
Exposure of the consumer
When looking at the vast array of chemicals in use today, most of them
will have industrial applications and only relatively few will directly be
used by consumers. Especially highly reactive chemicals with their inherent
potential for health hazards will generally not enter into consumer
application fields simply due to their limited stability. But if a chemical gets
to the consumer, efficient control measures can hardly be implemented, be
it for the exposure per se, the exposed population, appropriate handling or
prevention of misuse.
4.
Exposure of the general population via the environment
Apart from highly reactive substances, all chemicals will to some extent
enter the environment depending on their application fields and their
processing to other end products. The environmental concentrations are
determined by the amount released, by the distribution media, local
situations and the efficacy of the different degradation processes. In
general, the exposure of the population via the environment will be very
low as compared to the workplace and health hazards are not to be
expected. Of course highly persistent and highly toxic substances can be an
exemption to this rule and should be monitored carefully.
These exposure scenarios can be exemplified by a textile dyestuff:
manufacturing within the chemical industry makes use of various starting
materials and intermediates, which will not end up—apart from minute
impurities—in the final product, and downstream exposure to these
materials will be negligible. The manufacture of the dyestuff, its further
handling, processing and formulation within the chemical industry can
easily be controlled. But when this material is used downstream in textiledyeing
workshops an efficient exposure control and appropriate handling
may not always be guaranteed and higher exposures are conceivable.
During the dyeing process, parts of the material enter into the
environment, for example into aqueous media. This might lead to an
exposure of the general population, albeit at very low concentrations.
Consumer exposure can occur via migration of the dyestuff from the
textile, sweat being the carrier medium or for small children the saliva, but
exposure will most often be so low that a health hazard is not to be
expected.
It is one of the main concerns of industry within the processes of
classification and risk assessment that sufficient consideration is often not
given to the different exposure profiles of each chemical. This results in
simplified black and white decisions, which are not very helpful for an