Safer chemicals for manufacturers

Chemicals of concern are substances that are known to have severe negative effects on human health and the environment, such as compounds that are:

• Carcinogenic, mutagenic, or toxic to reproductive organs,
  or
• Persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic to humans or the environment,
  or
• Endocrine disruptors (which impact normal hormonal function, reproductive development and function).

Examples of chemicals of concern include the following:

• Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
• Phthalates.
• Flame retardants.

Be as specific as you can with your request. We recommend you ask for all intentionally added chemicals regardless of concentration, and impurities present above a specified threshold, ideally 100 ppm or lower, in the material you are purchasing.

Some suppliers may prefer not to disclose the full chemical list in their products to you, citing “proprietary information.” It could also be that they do not fully know. In these circumstances we recommend you first try to gather as much chemical and hazard information as possible by using:

• Transparency standards, such as Health Product Declaration® Open Standard.
• Chemical management platforms, such as SciveraLens or 3E Exchange.
• A consultant to help you gather this information from your supplier(s).
  NOTE: If you are planning on hiring a consultant and are interested in certifying your product(s), we recommend you consider the consultants who are approved to assess for the certification you are interested in.

These tools allow your suppliers to share known hazard of the chemicals used and disclose some ingredients while not disclosing their “proprietary ingredients.”

If this approach does not work, there are several other ways to gather more information but you won’t be able to ensure that you are using the safest chemicals that work in your product. Alternative approaches to gather information on chemicals used are to ask the supplier:

• For the identity or hazards of chemicals that serve specific functions in your product.
  • This might be particularly useful for additives in plastic components.
    For example, if you are concerned about flame retardants or plasticizers, ask your supplier to disclose the chemicals with those function(s).
• To confirm that the ingredient or material that you buy from them does not contain chemicals or chemical classes of concern that you specify. If they confirm, this tells you that:
  • The ingredient or material is free of the chemicals or chemical classes you specified.
  • It does not necessarily mean that what they use instead is a safer alternative (e.g., it could be of equal or unknown concern and require further studies). 

This assessment can help you:

• Prioritize which chemicals to replace or avoid.
• Formulate beyond just “free of” a defined list of chemicals but rather remove all chemicals that have certain hazards of high concern (i.e., formulate products without any chemicals known to cause cancer, rather than replace only those that are specifically banned or regulated).

• Safer Chemical Ingredient List (SCIL): The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Safer Choice program maintains a free list of safer chemical ingredients arranged by functional-use class. Every ingredient on the list has been evaluated for harmful effects to humans and the environment and meets minimum health criteria. Chemicals on SCIL represent the safest in their functional-use class. Trade name ingredients that have met the criteria are available for a low-priced subscription through CleanGredients.
• ChemForward has several databases sorted by industry and product types (e.g., cosmetics, packaging, electronics, etc.) where you can search for chemicals by function and find alternatives.
  • SAFER™ is ChemForward’s free database where you can find a list of ingredients by trade name that meet their minimum material health criteria.
• Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Registry includes chemicals and materials that are either Cradle to Cradle Certified® or have a Material Health Certificate™.
• TCO Certified Accepted Substance list is a free list of plasticizers, flame retardants, stabilizers, and process chemicals that meet their minimum material health criteria.
• UL Prospector and SpecialChem are free platforms where you can search for materials from global suppliers by function, chemical, properties, and more. Technical data and supplier information is included but chemicals listed are not assessed against minimum material health criteria.
• Chemsec Marketplace is a free platform where you can search for alternatives and post to the platform if you don’t find alternatives. Others can then respond with suggestions.

Chemical hazard assessments tools require a certain amount of data before you can assess and demonstrate that a chemical is a safer alternative. “No data” does not mean that a chemical is safer. Here are a few ways to conduct a chemical hazard assessment, listed in order of suggested use.

Screen your alternative against a preferred substance list

If the chemical(s) you are considering are listed on a preferred substance list with transparent minimum criteria (such as on the EPA's Safer Chemical Ingredient List (SCIL) or the TCO Certified Accepted Substance list) and it meets your minimum criteria, you do not need to do any additional assessment in order to select it as a safer alternative. This is because a thorough chemical hazard assessment has been performed on the chemical and it was placed it on the list as the minimum criteria was met.

Look for existing chemical hazard assessments

If your suppliers are unable to provide a thorough material health assessment and the chemicals are not on a preferred substance list, we suggest you look for an existing assessment to determine if it is a safer alternative. Check these sources for completed assessments:

• Interstate Chemicals Clearinghouse Chemical Hazard Assessment Database has free, publicly available GreenScreen® assessments.
• GreenScreen® Assessment Registry allows you to search for a chemical and, if there is a completed assessment for that chemical, link you to the source. Over 200 GreenScreen® assessments can be accessed for free.

These tools require logins or memberships, but they have thorough chemical hazard assessment:

• ChemFORWARD (see free examples here).
• SciveraLENS GHS+.

Hire a contractor to conduct a chemical hazard assessment

If you can't find a thorough assessment on a chemical you're evaluating, we recommend you use one of the assessment methodologies below.

• ChemFORWARD.
• GreenScreen® for Safer Chemicals.
• Cradle to Cradle Certified Material Health Assessment.

• 3E Exchange Resource Library.
• Training Tutorials for Pharos.
• Exploring and Selecting Safer Chemical Alternatives Through Chemical Hazard Assessment and Sciveralens®.
• ChemFORWARD Demo Video.
• GreenScreen® Education and Training.
• Safer Choice: What Formulators and Suppliers Need to Know: Learn how your products can obtain the Safer Choice label and the opportunities for suppliers to differentiate their products in the marketplace.
• Online training on analysis of alternatives - ECHA.
• Assessment Tools for Safer Chemical Decisions: This online course teaches participants about decision-making tools and methods used for comparative chemical hazard assessments.

Chemical hazard assessments provide a framework to collect and assess data from different sources which provides a consistent way to evaluate the hazards of a chemical.  These assessments commonly give each chemical a grade or score. An alternatives assessment is a process for identifying and comparing potential chemical and non-chemical existing alternatives used as substitutes to replace chemicals or technologies of high concern. These assessments commonly evaluate factors like hazard, exposure, performance, cost, and availability.