You might not realize it, but we are exposed to dozens of hazards every day. Can any of these hazards negatively impact your health? Definitely. This is the Exposure Scientist Podcast. My name is Alex LeBeau, and here we answer your questions and concerns on what you may be exposed to every day. Welcome to the Exposure Scientist Podcast. the views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or management this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered health advice it is recommended that you consult an exposure scientist to discuss the particulars of your exposure scenario Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Exposure Scientist podcast. Slight programming note just to remind and let you know, we have a new website feature where you can go over to our website for the podcast and leave a voice message or a voice note on there that we could actually play on the show. So if you have any questions or comments, go over there, leave them. Test it out. We'll try it out. Play it on the show and see if we can respond to any concerns or comments that you do have. On today's episode of the Exposure Scientist podcast, we're going to be discussing a topic that has been creeping up more and more that I've noticed, and I've been contacted more and more about it, and that is related a lot to, I'll say, generally product safety. Now, I have a history of performing product safety assessments on consumer or other type of products that people use, whether it's in the workplace or in the home setting or in the office setting. But there is more and more concern that people are looking for problems when they may or may not exist. And I say that as in, you know, there are lots of different products that are marketed or advertised as, you know, just being, you know, Free of contaminants. I'm just making up something that someone says, you know, the free and clear and good is the wind-driven snow, so to speak. And what I've noticed and seen a trend more and more is that there's been a push to want to test that idea. Now, some products, generally I'll say this, some products fall under regulatory compliance regulations. EPA, whether, you know, a pesticide or EPA regulatory paradigm or FDA's regulatory paradigm for either a food or a medical device or what have you. But what about consumer products? What about someone that's going to be using anything you can think of, putting new carpet in there, having towels, doing just, I wouldn't say normal consumer stuff. What about those type of products? Well, that's a little more of a... a Wild West almost kind of shoot because there are some, I'll say, brands and brand identities that know what they're doing. They're understanding. They say, listen, we're going to have internal standards for what we are setting up. There's large electronic manufacturers that have those type of things set up. They have specifications. There are some brands that have, I'll say, if you want to be associated with a brand brand, that have certain specifications for meeting requirements of that brand, certain tolerances that they set up in these specifications. Other ones may or may not have that or may have it at different levels. So one of the interesting things as time goes on, and I'm speaking more generally here because some of the scientific community may understand this, but some others may not be totally up to speed on it. Obviously, as time goes on, a laboratory's ability to quantify data, quantify data, constituents or what have you of what something is made of gets better and better. So, you know, it used to be where you look at something in the part per million range and then, you know, 10 or 20 years go by, then you can start looking things in the part per billion range and another 10, 15 years go by. And now we're looking at things in a part per trillion range. So technology is getting better and better. But what is concerning is that are people paying attention and aware of what their products have in them? And that there's a lot of different ways to address that concern. have they done analysis? I'll just say, you know, maybe it's a consumer product that is, I'm just going to throw something out there, you know, toilet paper. Has anybody evaluated toilet paper, paper towels, you know, and seen what the constituents are, what are they using in their products to see if there's anything that maybe should not be there? And I say should not be there is, you know, it depends on how these products are marketed. Is it free of contaminants? Is it pure? How are products marketed? I'll tell you why. I've seen more and more people going out there and doing assessments of consumer products. baby wipes, maybe it's diapers, maybe it's pens, maybe it's mouse pads, what have you. They're going and identifying products, they're pulling them off your shelves at stores, and they're sending them off to labs for analysis. And at these laboratories, they're asking these labs, they're saying, hey, can you do a non-targeted analysis for us? Saying, hey, what do we think What can you, I'll say, semi-quantitatively identify as in this product? Saying, hey, can you give us a yes, no on this product? If you're doing it with your tolerances or your reporting limits at your laboratory, do you see heavy metal, PFAS, something that shouldn't be in there? And there have been instances where people are getting detections of things that may or may not be need to be in there. Maybe it's a low-level process contaminant that's left over. Maybe it's something that there's certain tolerances that are already established or in the manufacturing products, and maybe it falls below that tolerance, but maybe it's a health concern. Has anyone done that analysis? More and more, I'm seeing that People are just grabbing things off the shelf and sending them in for testing. And if they're getting hits on them, they're creating, I'll say, highlighting them from a notification standpoint. It says, hey... Did you know this product has this and that? Did you know this product says that it's free of everything, but it actually has that? Recently, I think I mentioned on the podcast, there is some people doing some testing of some PFAS and some watch bands, consumer watch bands from a large manufacturer, an electronic manufacturer that probably everyone is familiar with. And they said, hey, there's PFAS in these bands. And then... That kicks off another analysis of, hey, you know, is it PFAS? Were there any tolerances for PFAS in that product? Is a PFAS bioavailable? What is the amount that's maybe crossing the skin to get into the body? What is a harm that potentially could be producing? There's a lot of decision trees that go on to lower levels. But it comes back to the higher levels as well. Nobody told us PFAS was in there and nobody told us these metals were in there. Nobody told us these contaminants, quote-unquote contaminants, were in there. And that sometimes can create a problem for a manufacturer, especially if they didn't notify someone that was in there or notify what the tolerances were and say, hey, this product could contain up to X amount of this material. And that's important because... lots of people are more and more hyper-focused on what's in their products and what may be harming them. Now, again, that goes back to the bioavailability. What does it actually mean? But at a higher level, there's a bigger concern of, hey, people want to know what's in their products. And if you're not notifying them that these things could be in their products, it's going to create a problem. I have said time and time again, and let me take this back, and Maybe these people don't even know what's in there. But time and time again, I have said it is better for you to know what is in your product than for someone else to tell you what's in your product. Over and over again, I've harped on that from a consumer product safety standpoint. If you want to do a non-targeted analysis yourself, great. It's important for you to do because that helps you identify what may be in there, identify what the root cause is, and take care of it. But you don't want someone knocking on your door. Maybe it's a regulator. Maybe it's a lawsuit. And someone says, hey, you didn't tell us this was in there. And then you've got to play catch up like, well, OK, now it may be in there. It's at low levels. It's not really a concern. It's not going to cross any, you know, any dermal barriers or it's not going to be internalized into the body and the doses. You know, it creates more and more problems. Exposure Science covers a broad subject area, including toxicology, industrial hygiene, and risk assessment. From occupational, community, or environmental exposure, exposure scientists apply scientific methodologies to understand exposure risks and apply controls when necessary. We at Exposure Assessment Consulting have this expertise. Please reach out to us at info at exposureconsulting.com for a free 15-minute consultation to discuss the specifics of your exposure scenario. If you know what is in there to begin with and get ahead of it, that's great. Be open and honest. Be like, hey, this is a specification we have. These are the methods that we require you to use to analyze it because these are the ones we've identified that are relevant for human exposure. Because sometimes in these laboratory scenarios, they're doing this non-targeted analysis. They're saying, hey, Maybe we should do this under the worst case scenario. Maybe we should say, hey, how much of anything can we get out of this, whether it's biologically relevant or not? Let's just put it to the max and see what comes out of it. Now, is that going to be actually relevant to human exposure? Likely not. But there are people who are doing that because then it's like, oh, well, this is in there. It's a great tool. headline to grab and it's important to contextualize that headline but some people are not contextualizing it some people are leaving it off some people leaving up to more of a sensational eye grabber because that's what generates i'll say additional thoughts recently and this is kind of i'll say segues and there's recently i've made aware of a few people out there on youtube or i don't get on tiktok but you know there's a few i'll say i'll other video-based apps where people are getting on there and they're making these videos to say they're going into stores and picking up products and holding up the camera says i would never use this because it's toxic or i would never use this because it contains whatever chemical and they don't give any context to it they don't say well for example one of them was i would never use this because it contains a deadly or a harmful fragrance and the fragrance they reference the study they reference and you look it up and then our pub med which is i'll say a general search for research journal publications there's one article on it and the one article was from 25 years ago. And it was an animal study, a bioassay in animals, where they exposed them for eight hours a day for weeks at a time. And this was just like something that you may be exposed to for 10 minutes, the product or whatever it was, a very limited use scenario based on the conditions. But they don't contextualize that. So then you've got people making these Big claims of, hey, this stuff is deadly and dangerous. I would never use this. And then it is much more work on the back end to go and refute that because, A, you're refuting something that's already been claimed against you, that you're already at an uphill battle there. B, you got to go through all the process, all the details, do your risk assessment, some calculations, and then refute. Then tell your story after the story has already been told about you. Now, is it difficult to get ahead of that? Could and could not be. It involves risk communication and good risk communication. And I think I mentioned on a previous podcast, I was supposed to be actually attending AIHA Connect this year and unfortunately cannot go to other schedule obligations, but I was going to be talking about effective risk communication there. You know, the importance of performing effective risk communication to your target audience. It involves distilling a very complex problem down to a way that everyone can understand it. You know, if we want to talk amongst ourselves, that's great. We could talk in very technological terms or very, I'll say, industry-focused terms. But nobody else is going to understand that. I was having a conversation recently with a client. You know, I was using... higher level terminology. And I just said, Hey, for example, it could be viewed as this. And they're like, that example made us understand what you were talking about. You are talking about all this other stuff. And it sounds like theory to us. But as soon as you gave us that example, it clicked in our minds. And that's, what's important. Use examples, you know, have those people have the, you know, if you're having a product, have a dedicated spot on your webpage to say, listen, you know, Our product, we set up these tolerances that maybe have a low level of this. You would have to be exposed to– I'm just going to throw it out there. Maybe it's something in paper towels. Maybe it's a fragrance in paper towels or trash bags or whatever it is because trash bags now smell like certain, I'll say, fragrances. You would have to give the example of, hey, you would have to be locked in a small room with– I'm making up numbers, a thousand of these bags for two years to have any potential. I emphasize potential health effects. Give some context. Make it simple for people. That's what I've done a lot in my career is trying to help people. Understand complex problems using simple terminology and examples. And if you can get ahead of that and be like, listen, you know, if that's on your website already and somebody tries to say, oh, well, it's dangerous, you can just put them on your website and say, listen, we've already evaluated that potential thought or claim. Here it is very easily laid out. And we did it, you know, three years ago. I don't know why this guy didn't or girl didn't go to our website and just review the information. Because it's easy for someone to make a claim. It's harder for someone to refute that claim once that seed's already been planted. So again, this is kind of targeting the idea that product safety is important. From a regulatory standpoint, there are regulatory processes for it. But for other consumer products, there may not be. Some brands, some manufacturers do their due diligence, but others don't. may not even be aware of it. And again, it's important for you to understand what is in your product, to detail what is in your product before someone else tells you what's in their product, either from a complaint or I'll say a recall or even from a lawsuit. Know what's in there, get ahead of it and address it because everyone has these concerns and You know, everyone used to love a new car smell until they said, whoa, are those VOCs that are being emitted in there dangerous? Maybe we shouldn't have that many, or they have low VOC paint. You know, there's a reason and rationale why we have this stuff and we're doing this stuff. Get ahead of the game. Get ahead of any complaints or thoughts, or you don't want to be highlighted on these other people's videos that are making these wild accusations because they're you want to make their accusations baseless. And if you can, that's great. Now, if there's something that is important that you maybe didn't analyze for or think about, and they say, hey, we found this, and hopefully they would do it in a nicer way, they say, hey, we found this. I've seen some companies say, nah, we're just going to blow that off. We're going to consider it. Now, maybe internally, they start freaking out and worry about it. But Sometimes people are just doing things to help. And you got to say, hey, thank you. We appreciate it. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We're going to address it right away. We're going to put a news release out there or do whatever. Everyone is so scared of bad press or being named in a lawsuit. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes happen with supply chains. I've seen it where, and seen and heard, where, hey, you know, we're doing this, we're getting these supplies, it's coming from a foreign country, and we, you know, maybe we analyze, we have a certificate of analysis on one lot. And they say, hey, this lot looks great, you did everything we want to, but they only analyzed the best lot. They were given the best lot. And subsequent lots maybe aren't the best product. You're going to have to spot check your lots. You're going to have to keep this analysis up. It's just not a one-time thing. It's a continual improvement process or continual evaluation process. know what's in your product. Because I would love to say everyone is on the up and up and pure and true, but sometimes things happen. Sometimes maybe people are saying, this is what we're always going to give you. And three years down the road, you're still relying on that COA that they gave you and is not even reflective of what they're giving you right now. So do some due diligence, continue it, have a process, have a plan laid out and make that plan public. If you go look at some of these larger electronic manufacturers, you can go find their specifications on their websites make it public so people know what you're doing get ahead of the game because when they say hey you know we found this in your product you can say yeah we have tolerances for it these are based on thresholds for bio under bioavailability understanding from a toxicological perspective and exposure assessment we're ahead of this so if you have any questions comments i'd love you to try the new website out see if we can get that working see if we can play your comments Reach out to me by phone, email. Happy to have a conversation because this is an important topic. And it's more and more people are going to go in stores, pull things off shelves, send them to a laboratory. And if they're not up to snuff, there's going to be a snowball effect that's going to result in lots of money later on instead of the little money that you could spend up front to understand what's in your product. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Exposure Scientist podcast and hope to see you again soon. Thanks so much. Thank you for listening to the Exposure Scientist podcast. You can connect with us at our website, ExposureConsulting.com, where you can book a private consultation and send in any questions regarding any episodes or our guests. See you in the next episode.