Integral Consulting Inc., Annapolis, MD, USA.
American Cleaning Institute, Washington, DC, USA.
Chemosphere. 2020 Nov;258:127242. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.127242. Epub 2020 May 31.
Polycarboxylate polymers have been common components of consumer and institutional cleaning products for decades. With interest heightened in the potential environmental impact of polymers, the American Cleaning Institute, the industry trade association of the cleaning products industry in the United States, is reassessing the state of the science regarding the environmental safety of polymers in cleaning products. In this case study, acrylic acid homopolymers and acrylic acid-maleic acid copolymers are evaluated using historical ecotoxicity data that have been reported over the past three decades. The evaluation includes an environmental exposure assessment that is based on recent information regarding the occurrence of those ingredients in cleaning products and market sales data for cleaning products sold in the United States. The ecotoxicity of polycarboxylate polymers is generally low. Consequently, the potential environmental risks associated with their use in cleaning products in the United States are low even when applying very conservative assumptions to the environmental exposure assessment. In addition, there are recent supporting conclusions from assessments by the governments of Australia and Canada that polycarboxylate polymers are polymers of low concern, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has included a number of polycarboxylate polymers among the ingredients on its Safer Chemical Ingredients List based on their low hazard profile.
多羧酸聚合物几十年来一直是消费者和机构清洁产品的常见成分。随着人们对聚合物潜在环境影响的兴趣日益浓厚，美国清洁协会（美国清洁产品行业的行业贸易协会）正在重新评估关于清洁产品中聚合物环境安全性的科学现状。在这个案例研究中，使用过去三十年来报告的历史生态毒性数据评估丙烯酸均聚物和丙烯酸-马来酸共聚物。评估包括基于最近有关这些成分在清洁产品中的存在和在美国销售的清洁产品的市场销售数据的环境暴露评估。多羧酸聚合物的生态毒性通常较低。因此，即使在对环境暴露评估采用非常保守的假设的情况下，它们在美国清洁产品中的使用所带来的潜在环境风险也很低。此外，澳大利亚和加拿大政府的评估也得出了最近的支持性结论，认为多羧酸聚合物是低关注的聚合物，美国环境保护署已根据其低危害特征将一些多羧酸聚合物列入其更安全化学物质清单中的成分。
