Pushing Safer Alternatives

California regulators are taking action to step up pressure on manufacturers to replace toxic chemicals in consumer products with safer alternatives.

The state regulation proposed on June 23 would require manufacturers to assess whether safer alternatives exist to 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.

"Study after study has shown that many consumer products are not safe, resulting with more and more being recalled," said Maziar Movassaghi, acting director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). "This draft regulation is the first of its kind in the nation, and it essentially shifts the way government, industry, and the public think about the products that end up in our homes."

The proposal would create four new lists of concern--two for chemicals and two for products that contain them.

Under the draft regulation, DTSC would identify chemicals that are prevalent in consumer goods and that can harm health or the environment. The department would list these as chemicals under consideration. Drawing from these substances, DTSC would then build a priority list of chemicals of concern that it determines pose the greatest threat.

Next, the department would list consumer products that contain chemicals of concern, based in part on information that manufacturers would have to supply to the state. Applying factors such as volume of an item in commerce, extent of public exposure to the chemical of concern, and disposal, DTSC then would select a list of priority products.

If one of its products ends up on the priority list, a manufacturer would have to assess whether an alternative substance--or a product redesign--would make the item less toxic than continued use of the chemical of concern.

Companies may opt to keep using the chemical of concern in a product. But if DTSC determines that a safer alternative is technologically and economically feasible, the state would ban sales of that item within two years. Manufacturers could ask the department for an exemption if the product contains a "minuscule" amount—defined as a concentration of 0.1% or less--of a chemical of concern.

The draft regulation "goes far beyond green chemistry," says Doug Fratz, vice president of scientific and technical affairs at the Consumer Specialty Products Association.  The proposal, he says, "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."

Others in the private sector are still reviewing the proposal, says John R. Ulrich, cochairman of the Green Chemistry Alliance, an industry group that includes state and national trade associations and individual companies. The alliance has called for the regulation to be risk-based and for it to protect confidential business information, according to Ulrich, who is also the executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of California.