6
Risk Assessment and Management of Chemical
Products
6.1
The Diversity of Chemical Products and Their Risks
With such a wide range of structural variations available on the molecular level,
there is of course a very diverse set of chemicals available on the global market
today. An ever-increasing number of them—just over 22,000 and 45,000 industrial
chemicals are registered and commercially available in the EU and the United
States, respectively (ECHA, 2020; US EPA, 2019)—are widely used in industry,
commercial, and consumer products, for example, as:
• Biologically active agents such as pharmaceuticals or pesticides
• Polymeric materials such as epoxy resins, polyesters, etc. used, e.g., in packaging
and construction
• Industrial chemicals such as dyes, additives, detergents, solvents, etc.
A review of existing inventories internationally even estimates the number
of registered chemicals globally to be as high as 350,000 (Wang et al., 2020).
Manufactured chemicals can be marketed worldwide, and their annual production
volumes can vary widely, from less than 100 kg per year up to 100,000 tonnes per
year and more. They can also be combined together in mixtures or formulations that
have targeted properties or serve specific functions different from those a single
chemical may have on its own. However, in this book, the focus is placed on
understanding chemical products as the creation and use of single chemicals.
While chemical products are designed to meet a specific need or perform a unique
function, the quality of a chemical product is also evaluated by considering the risks
it poses to humans and the environment as undesired side effects. Understanding and
minimizing (or preferably avoiding) these risks are where product risk assessment
plays an important role, and it is complementary to the use of life cycle assessment
(see Chap. 5). Synthetic chemicals are those that are manufactured by humans; they
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
K. Hungerbühler et al., Chemical Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62422-4_6
107
Risk Assessment and Management of Chemical
Products
6.1
The Diversity of Chemical Products and Their Risks
With such a wide range of structural variations available on the molecular level,
there is of course a very diverse set of chemicals available on the global market
today. An ever-increasing number of them—just over 22,000 and 45,000 industrial
chemicals are registered and commercially available in the EU and the United
States, respectively (ECHA, 2020; US EPA, 2019)—are widely used in industry,
commercial, and consumer products, for example, as:
• Biologically active agents such as pharmaceuticals or pesticides
• Polymeric materials such as epoxy resins, polyesters, etc. used, e.g., in packaging
and construction
• Industrial chemicals such as dyes, additives, detergents, solvents, etc.
A review of existing inventories internationally even estimates the number
of registered chemicals globally to be as high as 350,000 (Wang et al., 2020).
Manufactured chemicals can be marketed worldwide, and their annual production
volumes can vary widely, from less than 100 kg per year up to 100,000 tonnes per
year and more. They can also be combined together in mixtures or formulations that
have targeted properties or serve specific functions different from those a single
chemical may have on its own. However, in this book, the focus is placed on
understanding chemical products as the creation and use of single chemicals.
While chemical products are designed to meet a specific need or perform a unique
function, the quality of a chemical product is also evaluated by considering the risks
it poses to humans and the environment as undesired side effects. Understanding and
minimizing (or preferably avoiding) these risks are where product risk assessment
plays an important role, and it is complementary to the use of life cycle assessment
(see Chap. 5). Synthetic chemicals are those that are manufactured by humans; they
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
K. Hungerbühler et al., Chemical Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62422-4_6
107