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Survey and health risk assessment of products for treatment of sports injuries and pains

Summary and conclusions

Assessment of products for treatment of sports injuries and pains

Background and purpose

Through recent years the Danish people have become more physically active and are practising some kind of sport regularly. The increase has been significant from year 2000 till today and applies for both men and women.

This increased activity level has, however, also resulted in an increased risk of injuries and sore muscles and joints.

In case of minor injuries most people, professionals as well as exercisers, prefer to self-treat their injuries, often with products which are applied to the skin.

Over generations various minor ailments have been treated by hot and cold therapy products. Recent years have seen an increasing number of therapy products on the market for easing and removing muscle pain. Today the Internet offers a variety of web sites regarding exercise and injuries and more of these recommend use of pain relief creams and gels.

The purpose of this project is to identify the most commonly used products and to asses their popularity. The products selected have been analysed for their content of various substances, especially for active substances. Finally, potential hazardous substances have been identified.

The survey

The project has been carried out by the Danish Technological Institute.

The survey of the sports injury products on the market and their chemical substances has formed the basis of the further assessment of the products.

Due to the very different base formulations of the analysed products, ranging from aqueous to glycerine and paraffin based systems, it was chosen to base the analysis method on headspace measurement.

In order to obtain sufficient sensitivity and lowest possible detection limit it was decided to use Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME) combined with GC/MS.

A chemical screening was carried out with the purpose of determining the content of volatile, organic substances in the selected products. The preliminary screening identified more than 30 different organic substances. In consultation with the Danish EPA it was decided to quantify approx. 20 substances and to carry out a subsequent analysis of organic solvents.

Six of the detected substances were selected for further analyses because of their relatively high concentration of substances, which may be hazardous. Further, four solvents were analysed.

Main conclusions

Apart from a health risk assessment of the products it has been investigated whether the products observe the regulations laid down in Statutory Order No. 923, 2005 on Classification, Packaging, Labelling, Sales and Storage of Chemical Substances and Products.

Of the 12 products 2 should have been labelled according to the prevailing labelling requirements.

Additionally, according to Statutory Order Exhibit 2, par. 2.13 the products Nos. 4, 8 and E should be labelled with the text "Contains (substance name). May cause allergic reaction"

Table 0.1 shows the health risks of the 12 selected products and their declaration requirements.

Table 0.1 Potential health impacts of selected sports products and labelling requirements

* Classification and marking of chemical substances and products acc. to EPA Statutory Order no. 923 of 28 September 2005

** Declaration requirements for allergens acc. to Statutory Order No. 923, 2005, exhibit 2, par. 2.13.

Based on the analysis the following recommendations can be given:

• Substances causing sensitization as e.g. camphor, d-limonene and α-Pinene should be avoided
• If solvents with cooling effect are to be added, ethanol should be preferred as the least poisonous.

Project results

Statistics Denmark has not been able to provide a quantitative survey of the consumption of pain relief products as there is no CN-code^[1], for these products. Neither web sites nor the visited shops could provide precise and detailed information about their sales and an estimate of the total sales in Denmark can therefore not be made.

The survey resulted in 39 registered products.

In consultation with the Danish EPA 12 products were selected for further analyses.

The survey disclosed that that the most critical substances would be volatile, organic components, and the analyses were therefore based on this substance group.

Table 0.2 shows the results of the quantitative analyses of the products with the highest content of the mentioned substances.

Table 0.2 Selected results of substances with highest quantified content

Further, organic solvents were revealed in products Nos. 4, 5, 12 and C. An ethanol content of 54% was detected in product no. 4 and with 2.2% in product No. 5. Product No. 12 holds 27 % 2-propanol and product C contains 14 % ethanol, 0,35 % tert-butanol and 1.9 % acetone.

The analysis has focused on skin irritation and sensitization as well as skin absorption. The results are shown in Table 0.3.

Table 0.3 Possible health impacts of selected substances in sports products

Footnotes

^[1] CN-code is a 8-digit product code number (CN ~ combined nomenclature)

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Version 1.0 Decmeber 2006, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency