Estimates of Lifetime‐Absorbed Daily Doses from the Use of Personal‐Care Products Containing Polyacrylamide: A Monte Carlo Analysis

Estimates of the lifetime‐absorbed daily dose (LADD) of acrylamide resulting from use of representative personal‐care products containing polyacrylamides have been developed. All of the parameters that determine the amount of acrylamide absorbed by an individual vary from one individual to another. Moreover, for some parameters there is uncertainty as to which is the correct or representative value from a range of values. Consequently, the parameters used in the estimation of the LADD of acrylamide from usage of a particular product type (e.g., deodorant, makeup, etc.) were represented by distributions evaluated using Monte Carlo analyses.(1–4) From these data, distributions of values for key parameters, such as the amount of acrylamide in polyacrylamide, absorption fraction, etc., were defined and used to provide a distribution of LADDs for each personal‐care product. The estimated total acrylamide LADD (across all products) for males and females at the median, mean, and 95th percentile of the distribution of individual LADD values were 4.7 × 10−8, 2.3 × 10−7, and 7.3 × 10−7 mg/kg/day for females and 3.6 × 10−8, 1.7 × 10−7, and 5.4 × 10−7 mg/kg/day for males. The ratio of the LADDs to risk‐specific dose corresponding to a target risk level of 1 × 10−5, the acceptable risk level for this investigation, derived using approaches typically used by the FDA, the USEPA, and proposed for use by the European Union (EU) were also calculated. All ratios were well below 1, indicating that all the extra lifetime cancer risk from the use of polyacrylamide‐containing personal‐care products, in the manner assumed in this assessment, are well below acceptable levels. Even if it were assumed that an individual used all of the products together, the estimated LADD would still provide a dose that was well below the acceptable risk levels.