Media Information
BAMA DEVELOPS MATHEMATICAL MODEL TO PREDICT EXPOSURE TO AEROSOLS
11/07/2008
With the introduction of REACH, downstream users of chemicals, such as aerosol fillers and marketers, must demonstrate more transparently the safety of their products. In order to assess whether consumer exposure to the airborne ingredients of an aerosol spray product constitutes a health hazard it is necessary to be able to either measure airborne concentrations or calculate them theoretically.
In response to this need the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) has further developed an Excel based Model to predict exposure to aerosols. It is a mathematical Model that can accurately predict concentrations in a room after an aerosol has been sprayed and provides a pragmatic and viable alternative to testing every product formulation.
Measurement of indoor air in real rooms is a complex process. It is also questionable how representative collected data is because real-time sampling requires very intrusive equipment, whilst the less intrusive passive sampling techniques can only give averaged data and no information on maximum and minimum concentrations or variations with time. This problem is particularly important when it comes to considering sprays because tests show that the airborne concentration of ingredients sprayed into a room rapidly decays with time after spraying.
The REACH Regulation, along with others, require that all chemicals are used in a way that does not adversely affect human health. The BAMA Indoor Air Model is a simple but powerful tool, independently validated by experts from BRE1 who concluded that the Model ‘can be used to predict the concentration of aerosol components within a room after a suitable time interval after spraying’. It has already been used by expert groups working with the European Commission to produce Technical Guidance on how to comply with REACH
The BAMA Indoor air Model is free to download from the BAMA website at www.bama.co.uk/bama_guides from 11 July 2008. The accompanying guide, also available from the BAMA website on the same day is free of charge for BAMA members and can be purchased by non-members for £25 . For more details please contact BAMA on 020 7828 5111, visit the BAMA website at www.bama.co.uk or email enquiries@bama.co.uk
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Note to Editors
[1] BRE work was published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring: JEM 2005,7,960-963.
For further press information please contact:
Gill Shaffer or Jo Jacobius
Axiom Communications
020 8347 8206
e-mail: gill@axiom-uk.com or jo@axiom-uk.com
Website: www.bama.co.uk
Date of issue: July 2008