Environmental Defense Fund Puts Safer Product Innovation to the Test
Environmental Defense Fund Puts Safer Product Innovation to the Test
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of hazardous chemicals prevalent in consumer products and demanding safer ingredients. Yet rising to this challenge has been difficult for companies. Right now, product innovators working to replace harmful chemicals with verified safer alternatives often don’t have access to data to make this switch in confidence. That is because information on chemicals is incomplete, expensive or hidden – but, luckily, that’s changing.
This year, Environmental Defense Fund sponsored a trial of 16 commonly used preservatives in collaboration with cosmetics retailer Sephora in an effort to strengthen ingredient safety and transparency. The trial used a chemical clearinghouse developed and managed by ChemFORWARD, a non-profit organization working to accelerate safer chemicals to market. The clearinghouse identifies preferred chemical alternatives – for which comprehensive toxicity data is available – that meet manufacturers’ functional requirements with low human and environmental health hazards.
The information produced from this trial has the power to help companies go beyond simply avoiding chemicals of known concern to identifying and using verified safer ingredients.
“ChemFORWARD is exactly the type of data-driven resource that is needed to scale safer product innovation,” said Boma Brown-West, senior manager of consumer health at EDF. “With its readily accessible information, we can get closer to a future where every product, on every store shelf, is made with demonstrably safer alternatives.”
EDF first called for the creation of an independent chemicals assessment clearinghouse in 2017 while developing baseline safety information for preservatives used in personal care products.
“The lack of data and safety information on chemicals is a major bottleneck to formulating safer products,” said Jennifer McPartland, senior health scientist at EDF. “Tackling this obstacle demands innovative approaches.”
But EDF isn’t the first to grapple with informational needs around safer chemical innovation – organizations ranging from narrowly focused industry groups to the United Nations Environmental Programme confront these obstacles when searching for data-backed safer chemical options to replace hazardous chemicals.
Using a GHS-based chemical hazard assessment methodology, ChemFORWARD, worked with leading toxicologists to assemble comprehensive, actionable data on safer alternatives into its Globally Harmonized Repository that is available to anyone who chooses to subscribe to the data. For each portfolio, ChemFORWARD researches safer alternatives, creates a short list of substances that are likely to be safer, and then conducts full chemical hazard assessments with leading toxicologists which then undergo a peer-review process before being posted on the cloud-based repository.
The clearinghouse can serve as a resource for product manufacturers, brands and retailers considering safer alternatives for chemical replacements, and as a place for chemical manufacturers to demonstrate their safer alternative options.
ChemFORWARD is a non-profit value chain collaboration established to create a globally trusted source for comprehensive chemical hazard information on safer alternatives.
Environmental Defense Fund, a leading international nonprofit organization that creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships. Connect with EDF on EDF+Business and Twitter.
