UC Santa Barbara

Chemicals in consumer products have become the focus of recent regulatory developments including California's Safer Consumer Products Act. However, quantifying the amount of chemicals released during the use and post-use phases of consumer products is challenging, limiting the ability to understand their impacts. Here we present a comprehensive framework, OrganoRelease, for estimating the release of organic chemicals from the use and post-use of consumer products given limited information. First, a novel Chemical Functional Use Classifier estimates functional uses based on chemical structure. Second, the quantity of chemicals entering different product streams is estimated based on market share data of the chemical functional uses. Third, chemical releases are estimated based on either chemical product categories or functional uses by using the Specific Environmental Release Categories and EU Technological Guidance Documents. OrganoRelease connects 19 unique functional uses and 14 product categories across 4 data sources and provides multiple pathways for chemical release estimation. Available user information can be incorporated in the framework at various stages. The Chemical Functional Use Classifier achieved an average accuracy above 84% for nine functional uses, which enables the OrganoRelease to provide release estimates for the chemical, mostly using only the molecular structure. The results can be can be used as input for methods estimating environmental fate and exposure.