During the lifecycle of commercial products, various kinds of constituent chemicals of the products should be released into the environment. The emissions of toxic compounds should cause health risks depending on the concentration and the toxicity of the chemicals. The environmental concentration of the emitted chemicals would depend on the transport of the chemicals as well as the emission rate from the sources. Since the emission rate of chemicals from materials changes with various parameters such as temperature, humidity, and history of the materials, the emission rate may not be considered to be constant during the lifecycle of the products. Consequently, the risks caused by the emission of toxic chemicals from the products should change with time. The use of the chemicals that may cause higher environmental risks during the lifecycle of the product should be avoided. The concept of time-change risks should be considered upon the stage of the product design for screening “greener” materials. In this study, we measured the emission behavior of chemicals emitted from various commercial products made of plastic materials such as poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC), polyethylene. The time changes of emission rate under various conditions were measured with the passive flux sampling method (Figure). The risks of the emission were evaluated based on the health index (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2005, 39, 371) as a toxicity measure as well as emission behaviors. As a case study, we conducted an analysis of time change of the risks that may cause human health effects based on the experimental results.

Analysis of time change of environmental risks: A case study of time change of risks caused by the emission of VOSs from polymeric materials used for commercial products

254th National Meeting (2017)

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