Passive sampling methods to determine household and personal care product use

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health
• Exposure Science
• Consumer Product Research

Background:

• Traditional methods for assessing household and personal care product use, such as questionnaires, are time-consuming and prone to recall bias.
• Accurate exposure assessment is crucial for understanding health impacts of consumer products.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel barcode-based platform for accurately quantifying household and personal care product usage.
• To assess the feasibility and acceptability of this new methodology in a longitudinal field study.

Main Methods:

• A barcode scanning platform was developed to identify products and quantify amounts used over one week.
• A longitudinal field study involving 47 California households (30 with young children, 17 with older adults) was conducted.
• Feasibility was assessed by barcode readability, data availability, and container retrieval; acceptability by refusal rates.

Main Results:

• Readable barcodes were found on 63% of personal care products and 87% of household care products.
• Sufficient data for product identification was available for 47% of personal care and 41% of household products.
• The amount of product used could be determined for most products, with low participant dropout rates.

Conclusions:

• The barcode-based method is appropriate, acceptable, and useful for gathering data on product use and potential exposures.
• This methodology shows promise for longitudinal studies investigating exposure to personal and household care products.
• The platform offers a more reliable and less burdensome alternative to traditional assessment methods.