A national governmental agency was interested in designing a testing plan to assess the safety of new fuels and fuel additives from a human health standpoint. In order to do so, they wanted to understand the range of health effects known to be associated with evaporative or combustive emissions from fuels and/or common fuel additives

ChemRisk was retained to review the toxicity literature on: whole evaporative or combustive emissions from fuels (including diesel fuel); volatile organic compounds commonly found in these emissions; and metals used as fuel additives or found as impurities in crude oil. In doing so, we searched the available literature and summarized the key health effects identified for over 20 chemicals or mixtures, including diesel exhaust, particulate matter, simple aldehydes (i.e. formaldehyde), simple aromatics (i.e. benzene), and several metals.

Based on the identified key health effects for these chemicals and/or mixtures, we identified the most appropriate biological assays to test for adverse effects of new fuels or fuel additives. A summary of our findings and recommendations were provided to the agency for their consideration in the design of their new fuel and fuel additives testing strategy.