Investigation on Combined Inhalation Exposure Scenarios to Biocidal Mixtures: Biocidal and Household Chemical Products in South Korea

Global regulations of biocides have been continuously enhanced for protecting human health and the environment from potentially harmful biocidal products. Such regulations consider the combined toxicity caused by mixture components in a biocidal product of which approval and authorization are to be enhanced. Although the combined exposure scenarios of components in mixtures are firstly needed to conduct the mixture risk assessment, systematic combined exposure scenarios are still lacking. In this study, combined inhalation exposure scenarios of biocides in household chemical and biocidal products marketed in South Korea were investigated based on the European Union (EU) and Korean chemical product databases and various data sources integration. The information of 1058 biocidal products and 675 household chemical products that are likely to cause inhalation exposure with two or more biocides was collected, and mixture combination patterns were investigated. Binary mixtures occupied 72% in biocidal products. The most frequently appearing binary mixture was phthalthrin and d-phenothrin. Based on the frequency of use, we suggested a priority list of biocide mixture combinations which need to be firstly evaluated for identifying their combined toxicity for the mixture risk assessment. This study highlights that the derived combined inhalation exposure scenarios can support and facilitate further studies on priority settings for mixture risk assessment and management of potentially inhalable biocides.