Design of household products ingredients with minimum safety and health risk

In household products, specific chemical ingredients are used to satisfy the desired target properties as required by the consumers. However, some of these ingredients may result in safety risks and adverse health effects. Early consideration of safety and health aspects during product design is vital to minimize the impact on consumers. Safety and health aspects have not been strongly emphasized before in many product design methodologies. Therefore, a systematic methodology is proposed to assess the safety and health effects of the potential ingredients, before they are used in the product formulation. The chemical ingredient candidate may be a novel ingredient or a typical ingredient used in formulated product design. In this work, a computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) technique was used to design the novel ingredient candidates with the integration of safety and health aspects. Then, the safety and health performance of the ingredient candidates were assessed by inherent safety and health sub-indexes. Each safety or health parameter was assigned with a score, based on the degree of the potential hazards. A higher score was given to the ingredients with higher safety risk or more severe health effect, and vice versa. The result of the safety and health assessment based on the score allocation had contributed to the selection of chemical ingredient. This new approach ensures that the selected ingredient possesses desirable properties as well as low safety and health effects. A case study on surfactant design is presented to illustrate the incorporation of safety and health aspects into product design methodologies.