2020 Q1 Retrospective and Outlook
2020 Q1 Retrospective and Outlook
We celebrated Earth Day 2020 by launching three new alternative portfolios of safer chemistry -- including one free demonstration portfolio. Our belief is as strong as ever that that better data leads to better decisions, creating better outcomes for humans and the environment.
During this time of great change and challenge, we are grateful to be able to share some important milestones and progress from Q1 in the summary below.
Our principal focus for this year is to populate our repository and we have made very exciting progress with 61 chemical hazard assessments of safer alternatives in progress and 100 funded, against our full-year goal of 200. It is extremely rewarding to see the infrastructure we built last year functioning well.
Looking ahead, we are excited to share that our team is working in partnership with the Healthy Building Network and our co-design partners to design a v2 platform that fully capitalizes on HBN’s Pharos dataset to offer an integrated tool that encompasses comprehensive restricted-substance and authoritative list screening (Pharos strengths) to full hazard assessments of safer alternatives (ChemForward’s strength). We plan to pilot this integrated B2B tool with select supply chains in Q3.
We have also deepened our bench, enriched our offering and strengthened our tools and processes. And the lessons we take from the first quarter offer clear and encouraging guidance on honing our attention for the balance of the year.
Q1 HIGHLIGHTS
We made Progress Populating the Globally Harmonized Repository
While completing 200 assessments this year will only scratch the surface, it is a large enough volume to allow us to exercise our systems and process and to identify efficiencies that will enable us to take a jump in scale to 2000 assessments in 2021.
Check out our Safer Alternatives page to find our growing collection of alternatives portfolios including:
Three new alternative portfolios including preservatives and UV filters for cosmetics and personal care applications
A FREE portfolio of EPA low-priority solvents for demonstration
Additional portfolios are in progress and in the planning phases. We continue to welcome your project ideas.
We deepened our bench meaningfully
From building our team, to diversifying our co-design partners, and ensuring quality suppliers we have made progress on all fronts:
Hired Lori Bestervelt, Ph.D., Director of Business Development & Partnerships, an experienced executive/toxicologist and seasoned researcher Erin Mulholland as Manager, Safer Materials & Data Integrity.
Engaged three assessment firms and three independent verifiers to contribute to the platform
Engaged electronics co-design partners to define a pilot project and create a clickable prototype for testing in Q2
We tested and strengthened our processes
Quality and data integrity are key to establishing a globally harmonized repository. The process of procuring 60+ chemical hazard assessments through our web portal and facilitating 51 peer reviews of chemical hazard assessments to date, and fielding two technical challenges, we have learned that:
Verification matters. The ChemForward program is designed to ensure robust, comprehensive, and credible chemical hazard assessments by engaging qualified toxicologists to perform the CHAs and expert toxicologists to review and verify them. However, discrepancies in classification may still result. These differences typically result from 1) use of different data sets or 2) differences in data interpretation. This essential step is proving to have great benefit for all parties and we can report that every single assessment has been improved during the peer review process.
Challenges are further improving the dataset. The Continual Improvement Technical Challenge process is intended to accommodate new information and mediate differences in interpretation. We have received two friendly challenges from to our first 10 chemical hazard assessments. The process has had an unintended benefit of encouraging productive dialogue with chemical suppliers, helping to build trust. The two challenges have already uncovered previously unreleased data that is now public, and has highlighted disjointed classifications in the European Chemicals Agency database.
We will continue this good work into Q2. You can follow our progress on LinkedIn.
