Personal care product preservatives: risk assessment and mixture toxicities with an industrial wastewater

The aquatic toxicity of eight preservatives frequently used in personal care products (PCPs) (iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, bronopol, diazolidinyl urea, benzalkonium chloride, zinc pyrithione, propylparaben, triclosan and a mixture of methylchloroisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone) was assessed by means of two different approaches: a battery of bioassays composed of single species tests of bacteria (Vibrio fischeri and Pseudomonas putida) and protozoa (Tetrahymena thermophila), and a whole biological community resazurin-based assay using activated sludge. The tested preservatives showed considerable toxicity in the studied bioassays, but with a marked difference in potency. In fact, all biocides except propylparaben and diazolidinyl urea had EC50 values lower than 1 mg L(-1) in at least one assay. Risk quotients for zinc pyrithione, benzalkonium chloride, iodopropynyl butylcarbamate and triclosan as well as the mixture of the studied preservatives exceeded 1, indicating a potential risk for the process performance and efficiency of municipal sewage treatment plants (STPs). These four single biocides explained more than 95% of the preservative mixture risk in all bioassays. Each individual preservative was also tested in combination with an industrial wastewater (IWW) from a cosmetics manufacturing facility. The toxicity assessment was performed on binary mixtures (preservative + IWW) and carried out using the median-effect principle, which is a special case of the concept of Concentration Addition (CA). Almost 70% of all experiments resulted in EC50 values within a factor of 2 of the values predicted by the median-effect principle (CI values between 0.5 and 2). The rest of the mixtures whose toxicity was mispredicted by CA were assessed with the alternative concept of Independent Action (IA), which showed higher predictive power for the biological community assay. Therefore, the concept used to accurately predict the toxicity of mixtures of a preservative with a complex industrial wastewater depends on degree of biological complexity.