Development and Demonstration of an Endocrine-Disrupting Compound Footprint Calculator

Chemicals in personal care products used in everyday lives become part of the wastewater stream. Wastewater treatment plants were not designed to remove these chemicals; therefore, these products and their metabolites persist in the effluent. Many of these chemicals are known, or suspected to be, endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) and can cause adverse impacts to aquatic organisms at trace concentrations. Here, we developed a publicly available EDC footprint calculator to estimate a household's EDC footprint. The calculator prompts users to input the number of products they own in each of three categories: health and beauty, laundry, and cleaning. The calculator, which is programmed with average values of EDCs in each product, outputs an estimate of the user's EDC footprint (mass) and ranks the contribution of each product to the footprint. When used by a group of 39 citizen scientists across the Susquehanna River Basin in the northeastern United States, the average household EDC footprint was similar to 150 g. Results of this tool aid in decision making by providing users with the information necessary to reduce the household's footprint through product selection that avoids specific ingredients or by replacing the top-ranking products with greener alternatives.

Automated summary

Chemicals from personal care products can enter the environment through wastewater and harm aquatic organisms. A publicly available EDC footprint calculator has been developed to estimate household footprints and guide users in selecting greener alternatives.