The California Safer Consumer Products Program: Evaluating a Novel Chemical Policy Strategy

In 2008, California enacted laws to restructure chemical policy and promote green chemistry. Ten years after the passage of California’s green chemistry laws, we assessed their performance through structured interviews with a sample of experts from government, academia, business, and the nonprofit sector. We combined the interviews with a scoping literature review to propose a new ten-point framework for evaluating the effectiveness of a chemical regulatory policy, and we assessed the performance of the California law against this framework. The California program performed well on transparency of the regulatory process; protecting vulnerable populations; placing the primary burden on the manufacturer; breadth of regulatory authority; and advancing the public right-to-know. Areas of weakness include unclear authority to require data on chemical use in products; an inefficient pace of implementation; and limited incentives for innovation. Promoting safer chemicals in products will require additional incentives to protect public health and the environment.

Substitution for Hazardous Chemicals on an International Level—The Approach of the European Project “Subsport”

The systematic description and promotion of substitution options and processes is an underdeveloped and often missing element in chemical management and chemical policy discussions. This article describes major barriers and drivers for substitution, and concludes that more specific information can be an essential instrument to overcome those barriers. It also explains the development and features of a large information tool under development called SUBSPORT, an abbreviation for Substitution Support Portal. SUBSPORT is a three-year European project which aims at providing authorities, industry, and stakeholders with information on alternatives for the effective substitution of hazardous chemicals. It will help companies meet the substitution requirements expressed in national, European Union, and international legislation. SUBSPORT will make information available in four languages.

The Drive for a Safer Chemicals Policy in the United States

This article analyzes the history, policies and politics of the modern era of safer chemical policy reform in the United States. In the last decade, state laws have modeled a chemical policy framework to phase out unnecessary dangerous chemicals in favor of safer alternatives. These state drivers, along with market campaigns to reduce downstream business use of hazardous chemicals, have weakened the chemical industry's resistance to fixing the broken federal chemical safety system. The obsolete Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) has failed to protect public health and the environment and has stifled innovation toward greener chemistry. Health advocates with a progressive policy vision tempered by legislative pragmatism have launched a TSCA reform campaign to challenge chemical industry power in a weak Congress. The opportunity and limits to winning meaningful TSCA reform are characterized and marked as a critical milestone on the path to a truly comprehensive safer chemical policy for the United States.