Abstract
To accurately evaluate the health risk of consumers from the combined effects of substances in multiple used household products, data on co-use and multiple-use habits and practices of consumers necessarily constitute a fundamental element of the exposure assessment process. To understand the current combined use pattern of household products, reliable combined exposure data were investigated. Eleven household product categories were selected and divided by 40 product use purposes. This approach analyzed the information of single-use, co-use, and multiple-use patterns of the 11 products at home collected from 6,397 respondents. All possible multiple combinations of products and product usage categories were analyzed. As expected, the participants used several products and product usage categories simultaneously. The data yielded important personalized combined exposure patterns that can be used in exposure assessment for hazardous substances that are used as ingredients of products. Furthermore, this study investigated the combined exposure amount of 11 products to user at home. Aggregate exposure amount per month to user was calculated to be 7479.6 g/month (six products in 1st survey) and 4056 g/month (five products in 2nd survey). This study provides valuable information on the individual use patterns and circumstances of household product use by consumers. Key words: Web-survey, combined exposure, household products, multiple-use patterns, combined exposure amount.  
Highlights
Household products are widely and regularly used by consumers; members of the general public may be exposed to hazardous chemicals by intentionally using products that are intended to improve users’ living and sanitary conditions
Reliable exposure factors derived from our previous study were established in notification by the National Institute of Environmental Research National Institute of Environment Research (NIER) (KNLIC, 2017; NIER, No 2017-55); because exposure factors differ by country, Korean exposure factors were specified in the law
As a result of market survey, eleven products were categorized to several usages and each usage of products was divided to their application types. This approach investigated the available data for the aggregate exposure assessment
Summary
Household products are widely and regularly used by consumers; members of the general public may be exposed to hazardous chemicals by intentionally using products (for example non-professional users) that are intended to improve users’ living and sanitary conditions. The public may be exposed to “unintentional use” when they are present when others use such products for household cleaning and personal care (Nilsen et al, 2002; ECHA, 2013). Consumers of household products are exposed to several kinds of substances on a daily basis (Wolkoff and Nielsen, 2017). Public interest in and awareness of the health impacts of exposure to multiple chemicals continues to grow as more information is gathered from several sources including personal care and household products (U.S.EPA, 2007). In the United States, organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) have developed documents that support the development of aggregate risk assessment (ATSDR, 2002; U.S.EPA, 2002, 2003).
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