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

Abstract

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.

The use of alternatives assessment in chemicals management policies: Needs for greater impact

“…Given their relatively recent implementation, this would be expected for the CA and WA policies. Solomon et al (2019) recently published an evaluation of the CA SCP program overall, but it lacked specificity on the alternatives assessment process. The EU REACH regulation and its authorization provisions have been the focus of more formal policy evaluations focusing on the impacts of substitution (European Chemicals Agency [ECHA], 2020[ECHA], , 2021a[ECHA], , 2022.…”

“…In one case, the Safer Products for WA program identified an alternative material to replace bisphenols in can linings, but could not assess the hazards of the alternative or determine it if was safer, because all its ingredients could not be identified (Washington State Department of Ecology [WA Ecology], 2022). Similar issues with access to CBI have been noted with the CA SCP program (Solomon et al, 2019). Consortium approaches implemented so far by manufacturers responding to SCP requirements have helped improve data sharing; however, transparency about potential alternatives is a continued challenge because submitters have tended to limit the scope of identified available alternatives without adequate justification (Grant et al, 2021; Zhou et al, 2021).…”

Enhancing the value of comparative exposure assessment in alternatives assessment

“…However, in the early days between the 1990s and early 2000s, AA focused primarily on hazard reduction, with minimal consideration of exposure assessment in most AA frameworks [CA DTSC, (California Department of Toxic Substances Control), 2020]. These frameworks deliberately distinguish themselves from risk-based approaches by focusing on the inherent hazards of chemicals and hazard reduction [Whittaker and Heine, 2013;NRC, (National Research Council), 2014;Jacobs et al, 2016;Solomon et al, 2019]. The rationale for downplaying exposure assessment is that exposures to alternatives and the chemical of concern are "substantially equivalent, " and therefore, the risk of chemicals is dominated by hazard [NRC, (National Research Council), 2014].…”