Minor influence of climbing hall characteristics on rubber-derived compound contamination highlights a need for material-level solutions

and in animal studies. Previous work, limited to a small number of facilities, left open whether climbing hall characteristics can mitigate RDC contamination. Here, we analyzed more than 200 samples of settled dust and foothold powder (abrasion material) collected from 41 climbing halls across 10 countries. RDCs were detected in every sample, confirming their ubiquity. Unsupervised analyses (hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis) revealed distinct patterns in concentrations and profiles, but supervised approaches (redundancy analysis, partial least squares, univariate correlations) showed only weak associations with hall characteristics. These results demonstrate that hall design and operation exert only a minor influence on RDC levels, underscoring that effective mitigation will require material-level solutions, specifically safe and sustainable-by-design (SSbD) innovations in the material used in climbing shoe soles to replace substances of concern with safer alternatives.