Beyond Bans: Closing the Gap Between How We Regulate Chemicals and How We Use Them
By Bill Walsh, Director, Safer Chemistry Impact Fund
In its efforts to phase out chemicals that are threatening our health and polluting our environment, society’s reach usually exceeds its grasp. This is partly because of the disconnect between how we regulate chemicals and how we use them. A free web-based tool called Chemworks, is bridging that gap.
We regulate chemicals based on the harm we seek to avoid. For example, to reduce exposure to “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, which are linked to an array of cancers and reproductive disorders, numerous laws are being proposed and enacted to ban them as a class.
But with the exception of pesticides, we use chemicals based on their function, not their inherent hazards. No brand requests “forever chemicals,” or “carcinogens”, or” endocrine disrupting chemicals“ in its supply chains. Businesses rely principally on performance specifications - a “non-stick coating,” “no- iron finish”, or a “colorfast dye.” Most people are surprised to learn that it is not uncommon for a consumer brand or retailer to not know the chemical magic behind a product’s performance. A chemical specification, if included at all, is indicated due to proven performance characteristics.
Not surprisingly, chemical phase-out efforts bog down in arguments over “essential use” exemptions and risk analysis based on convoluted exposure scenarios. Neither regulators nor advocacy groups want to be responsible for a regulation that increases a first responder’s risk of injury while fighting a fire or which denies a premature baby access to a lifesaving medical device for which the chemical of concern is “essential.”
Of course, chemicals are often overused where they are not required, and in many cases less toxic substitutes are available. The world will not end if we use our grandmother's cast iron skillet instead of a Teflon pan. That’s why so many chemical restrictions are focussed on specific consumer products like furniture, cosmetics and yes, frying pans.
The challenge for a society whose chemical pollution now exceeds the planet's capacity to restore itself is that this approach is too slow, and fails to address the scale of the problems we face. Forever chemicals alone contaminate over 9500 drinking water systems impacting over 170 million Americans. They flow from factories and airports, washing machines, dishwashers, shower drains, and even rainwater. We need to eliminate as many uses of PFAS as fast as we can.
While PFAS is an extreme use case with exceptional performance, ultra-low costs, and very high human and environmental hazards, there are hundreds of other chemical hazards, and thousands of chemical functions that could be optimized for human and environmental impacts - today. To do this we must enlist the innovative engine of manufacturing and align the interests of manufacturers and consumer facing brands with communities, workers, and customers in the search for solutions.
ChemWorks is a platform created to activate the electronics supply chain around safer chemistry. Together with the Safer Cleaners Registry and the CleanScreen formulation app, the new Alternatives Finder Ingredients Optimization App launched last month completes a comprehensive pathway: from ingredient-level evaluation, to product optimization, to third-party certification and market adoption. It is a harbinger of what can be accomplished with the growing body of safer chemistry data held in the Chemical Hazard Data Trust.
Partners in the Safer Chemistry Impact Fund played significant roles in this advance. The Apple corporation was an early champion of Chemworks as a means of safeguarding employee health by proactively ensuring that the cleaners used in its operations were not simply compliant with health and safety regulations, but as safe as possible. The company supplied the archive of chemical hazard assessments for common ingredients that now allow individuals and smaller companies to access the data without having to do their own research. Google co-funded new search functionality in the Chemical Hazard Data Trust to help users from across industry sectors and product categories to identify safer and functional chemical alternatives.
The alternatives finder functionality allows users to:
Search chemicals by function, application, and other standardized tags, grouping compounds into established categories.
Identify potentially safer, functional alternatives to solvents by comparing empirical solubility data using Hansen Solubility Parameters.
Enhance the likelihood of identifying acceptable substitutes by comparing physical-chemical properties critical to chemical functionality or acceptability.
Find potential alternatives with comparable performance by searching for compounds that are structurally similar to a target compound, especially where chemical structure dictates function.
ChemWorks was created as a hub for safer chemistry resources in electronics. More than that, it is a model of sharing safer chemical alternatives and scaling the use of products that meet industry-leading standards, providing yet another example of how to accelerate the phase-out of high hazard chemicals by aligning stakeholder interests around the search for safer chemistry. This type of innovation and collaboration is central to our mission at the Safer Chemistry Impact Fund. We invite all stakeholders to join us in leveraging these invaluable resources to shift our emphasis from the impediments to hazardous chemical phase-outs, to unleash the potential to accelerate the adoption of safer solutions.
