Safer Products for Washington

When preparing the priority products report, we evaluated a number of products, including many not included on the list we proposed. This product list does not address every single source of exposure to the chemical classes listed in the law. Instead, we are focused on finding significant contributions that give us the best opportunity to reduce exposures to toxic chemicals from consumer products.

We may address additional sources of exposure to these priority chemicals from other products in future cycles of Safer Products for Washington, and we welcome your suggestions for products to consider. The five-year cycle that Safer Products for Washington follows is outlined in the diagram above.

We submitted the Priority Consumer Products Report to the Legislature. They will review and finalize it by the end of the next legislative session in April 2021.

We are starting the next phase outlined in the law. This will involve needed research to assess the safety and feasibility of possible alternatives to the priority chemical classes used in these products. Part of this research involves asking manufacturers to submit information about their product formulations. The aim of this work is to determine whether we need to take regulatory action to reduce exposures to priority chemicals from the listed products.

We welcome feedback from stakeholders, both during formal public comment periods and outside of them, such as via email or in-person meetings.

Information about how you use and interact with the products on our list is always useful to us. It helps us understand how the use of products varies across individuals and communities. While your use of the product might seem obvious, it could be a use we haven’t considered.

Suggestions for additional chemical classes or consumer products to evaluate are also helpful.

We intentionally kept our product categories broad during Phase 2 of Safer Products for Washington. We expect to narrow the scope of the product definitions as we identify possible safer alternatives that may be available and feasible.

The products report does not create regulations or restrictions on any products. By outlining broad product categories now, we open up opportunities to reduce exposure to priority chemicals when safer alternatives are available. Keeping our product categories broad prevents us from constraining our scope too narrowly before we have fully evaluated safer alternatives.

We expect that for some product categories, safer alternatives will only be available for a subset of products. We plan to work with stakeholders to identify the opportunities and challenges within each of these product categories in the next phase. Any potential regulatory actions that come from this work will have clearly defined product scopes developed with input from our stakeholders.