Study Result: Third Party Exposure Study

A study was conducted by NSF to simulate product use conditions, a bulb pipette was utilized to “flush” the FÜM product (containing the essential oil-infused core) with air. The primary goal of the laboratory study was to provide insights into human exposure to volatilized essential oils from use of FÜM products under simulated conditions. Following five air purges, 1-5 uL of essential oil were volatilized from the two products at each time point. This represents an average of 0.2-1 uL of loss for each purge. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that the essential oil exposure per draw of product is likely to be less than 1 uL. The Total daily exposure would be dependent on the number of draws/day by an individual. For Example, 30 draws per day of the product would result in a maximum exposure of 30 uL of oil. Five consecutive air flushes were used to simulate five exaggerated draws of the product.

There are some limitations to this study. First, it is possible that handling and/or transfer of the core in and out of the FÜM product for weighing resulted in an additional loss of oil beyond air purging. Therefore, the values could be an overestimation of the true exposure. Follow up studies could utilize draft chambers with thermal desorption tubes to capture air samples (with volatilized oil) followed by GC-MS analysis. 

In addition, the model utilized here (air purging) is likely to result in higher volatilization of oil than a typical human draw. The NSF study was intended to create “exaggerated conditions”; however, it has not been clearly established how much volatilization occurs from a typical human draw of the product.

Finally, the results of the study suggest that only a small percentage (6-8%) of the 0.38mL within the core were volatilized after 4 hours (and 30 air purges). Therefore, even if the same core was used for multiple days, much of the essential oil may remain in the core. 

The study showed that the exposure from an exaggerated use of FÜM products was only 6-8% (0.0228-0.038 ml) of the total amount of essential oil contained in the Core (0.38-0.475 ml per Core). Health Canada monograph recommendations state that safe exposure is approximately 18 drops in one day via inhalation, or approximately 1 ml per day. From the results of this study, it is shown that typical exposure would be less than 4% of the safe maximum amount of safe exposure.