Aquatic Risk of Fragrance Materials: Advancing Prioritization in Aquatic Systems

For more than two decades, the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM) has been at the forefront of conducting environmental risk screening assessments, helping to ensure the safe use of all fragrance materials with reported use in consumer and commercial products. Salvito et al. (2002) introduced a tiered framework for prioritizing fragrance materials that enter aquatic systems via down-the-drain disposal in the United States and Europe. Given the global use of fragrance materials, there is a growing need to update the framework to better represent the environmental risk screening across additional geographic regions. This paper describes an update to the framework that applies global exposure data, as well as advances in predictive tools for ecological hazard assessment and environmental fate models. We integrate advanced methods for predicting environmental concentrations of fragrance materials in wastewater and surface water by using modern wastewater treatment plant fugacity models and accounting for abiotic and biotic loss mechanisms. To rapidly screen low-volume and low-toxicity chemicals using a data-driven approach, we apply an ecological threshold of concern in the initial tiers of the framework. In combination, these practices yield a broadly applicable, efficient, yet conservative framework for prioritizing fragrance materials for additional data gathering. This framework will enable RIFM and manufacturers and suppliers of fragrance materials to support science-based decisions on fragrance material environmental safety.