Poster Presentation Freshwater Sciences 2023

A comparative assessment of green product toxicity: What are the potential effects when released into the environment? (#620)

Tyler Allen 1 2 , Austin Gray 1 2 , Kathleen Mayer 1 2 , Cameron Braswell 1 2 , Tessa Thibodeau 2 , Isabella Iscaro 2 , Kathryn Ouimet 2 , Nathan Ferguson 2 , Piyali Roy 2 , Allison Montgomery 2 , Sean Horner 2
  1. Society for Freshwater Science, Blacksburg, VIRGINIA, United States
  2. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States

Green-labeled consumer and personal care products have been advertised as being less toxic and more biodegradable within the environment than their conventional counterparts. These labels can be dangerously misleading, as there is a lack of regulation and testing on these products to determine their fate within the environment and on non-target organisms.Urban environments with a more dense population have the potential to introduce these products into wastewater when disposing of these products and when looking at these unregulated green products there is potential for detrimental effects on aquatic ecosystems. When tested in previous studies, green products were shown to be equally or more toxic in 3 of the 5 product categories that were tested. Follow up research is currently ongoing with tests being done with the non-degraded product formulations. For this, we have exposed juvenile Daphnia magna to 4 different product categories ( dish detergent, fabric softener, laundry detergent, and all-purpose cleaner) that include one green labeled product and two conventional counterparts for a 48hr acute toxicity assay. After completion of the assays for the product categories we statistically analyzed the median lethal concentrations to kill 50% of the population (LC50) and compared the green-labeled product to its conventional counterpart using an LC50 ratio test. The LC50 values for the dish detergent category ranged between 0.0174-0.00214%.  LC50s for laundry products ranged between, 0.0101 - 0.000762% The fabric softeners category had LC50s that ranged between 0.00438 - 0.00255% Lastly, the all-purpose cleaners had LC50s that ranged between 0.0473 - 0.00979%. Upon completion of the degraded products exposure we will be able to see definitive results for the toxicity of green products and if they are actually less toxic.