Ethanol and plutonium? Really? Lots of data on both. You live in a rarified world where you can work in a fume hood and you actually KNOW what the chemicals are. In the real world we plan precautions for "products," complex mixtures of chemicals, most of which have no data at all, and a couple are trade secrets so we will never know what the hell they are.
When I do the research on the individual chemicals in these products and get SDSs on them, Section 11 is just a column of 10 "no data available" statements. After you see a half dozen of these every day for a decade, you'll also feel free to say "Only a small percentage have been texted for toxicity" -- chronic toxicity in particular.
How often I will see a product with 5 to 12 different ingredients and maybe only one in each product that might have some tox data. And one of two of the chemicals will be trade secrets and I won't even know what they are. And since it is a "mixture" I'm not going to find out anything from the SDS.
And just what do you do when some of the untested chemicals in that are in this product are in classes in which other members are known to be toxic? Even worse, since there is no tox data and no one can PROVE the untested chemicals are toxic, the manufacturer refers to them on the label as "nontoxic" as US consumer laws allow. And to make it really tough, suppose this chemical is obviously volatile, but there is no evaporation rate or vapor pressure. Lots of luck designing your ventilation system for this project, Ralph.
I will concur with the statement that "There are tens of thousands (low ball estimate*) of chemicals in commerce, and only a small percentage have been tested for toxicity."
It's time for my medication now.
Monona
* REACH registered 143,000 chemicals in 2008 which were all manufactured in amounts of over a ton a year. 30,000 of these were high production volume chemicals with no data.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Stuart <ralph**At_Symbol_Here**RSTUARTCIH.ORG>
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Sent: Fri, Jan 28, 2022 3:45 pm
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Chemical exposure and toxicity
>> I wish to assess the veracity of the statement: "There are many tens of thousands of chemicals in use, but only a small percentage have been tested for toxicity. "
>
My reaction to that statement is that it is too broad to be considered a technical statement backed up by data; rather it is a statement of perception. Perception varies in space, time and by stakeholder as indicated by your citations. I would also suggest that the term "toxicity" like "flammability" has an exposure scenario built into it.
For example, we have a pretty good idea of the toxic impacts of ethanol over a variety of exposure scenarios, but many fewer exposure scenarios for plutonium. Is there a way to fairly compare those data sets? Perhaps, given a specific audience at a specific time and place (e.g. citizens deciding whether to site a brewery or a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in their neighborhood). However, assessing this may better serve as an opportunity to explore the nature of uncertainty in scientific discussions by applying some error bars to the statement, such as you have done. That would be my approach to making a veracious statement about this situation.
Thanks for asking another good question to chew on!
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org
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