Consumer exposure to chemicals in indoor environment : A specific focus on chemicals from textile products

Textile products in indoor environment contain a variety of chemicals. Well-known examples are flame retardants, phthalates, formaldehyde and dimethylfumarate. Consumers are potentially exposed to these chemicals since a lot of textile products are present in indoor environment (clothing, curtains, floor covering, and upholstery of furniture) and consumers are in contact with these products for up to 24 hours a day. The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (VWA) commissioned RIVM to make an inventory on the presence of potential hazardous chemicals in indoor environment with a specific focus on textile products. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there are new substances present in textiles indoors that need urgent action with respect to surveillance and enforcement. Therefore, an inventory of all possible hazardous chemicals in textile products used indoors has been made in this report. Furthermore, recent emission studies have been mapped as well as potential health effects and specific regulation of substances in textiles. From this inventory it can be concluded that no urgent action is needed. Textiles can contain a couple of potential hazardous chemicals but for nearly all of them there is already specific regulation on national or European level effective. There are hardly any emission or exposure studies available which makes it very difficult to do a proper risk assessment on these chemicals. However, from the existing data, the contribution of the chemicals emitting from textiles to the concentration in indoor air and total exposure is expected to be low. In the future specific attention should be given to chemicals without regulation as well as to new developments such as nanotechnology.VWS-VW