California Targets Chemicals In Products

California regulators are stepping up pressure on manufacturers to replace toxic chemicals in consumer products with safer alternatives. A state regulation proposed late last month would require manufacturers to assess whether safer alternatives exist for certain chemicals in their products. The draft regulation is designed to protect public health and the environment from risky substances and to promote the use of greener chemicals. The proposal would create lists of chemicals of concern and products that contain them. If a product ends up on the state’s priority list because of a chemical it contains, the manufacturer would have to assess whether an alternative substance—or a product redesign—would reduce the item’s toxicity. Doug Fratz, vice president of scientific and technical affairs at the Consumer Specialty Products Association, says that the proposal “seeks to create a complicated regulatory morass of requirements for companies to defend their products and keep them from being banned, with the result being that their many benefits to public health and the environment could be lost.”