M10 PM Chemical Hazard Identification, Classification and Communication
Monday, 14 November 2005: 1:50 PM - 5:30 PM in 341-342

(HEI-1117-157340) U.S. EPA Design for the Environment: Chemical Hazard Assessment and Communication for Product Formulation.

DiFiore, D¹, Heine, L², Olsen, T¹, ¹ U.S Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA² Green Blue Institute, Charlottesville, VA, 22936

ABSTRACT- The U.S. EPA Design for the Environment (DfE) Program has a number of initiatives that evaluate alternative ingredients commonly used in products ranging from cleaning products to furniture and electronics. We provide an overview of DfE Programs with a focus on the Furniture Flame Retardancy Partnership, the Formulator Initiative and the DfE Green Formulation Initiative database project. Each of these initiatives involves partnerships and/or multi-stakeholder efforts to define hazard criteria and to use different evaluative, display and recognition frameworks. The challenge is to present information in a manner that is scientifically robust and useful for product design and development. We describe the process of stakeholder engagement, gathering information, deciding on relevant attributes and criteria, harmonizing hazard criteria with national and international regulations, hazard communication, eco-labeling and other environmental frameworks, and displaying data in a manner that allows discrimination based on the user's application. In the Furniture Flame Retardancy Partnership, industry submitted formulations are evaluated by the EPA and endpoints for all ingredients are ranked, allowing the user to select products based on the endpoints of greatest significance to them while keeping formulations proprietary. In the Formulator Initiative, a company submits its product formulations to EPA's New Chemicals Review Team through DfE. When chemicals of concern are noted and then substituted with chemicals with more favorable environmental profiles, the company is permitted to use the DfE logo on their product labels in recognition of the Partnership. The DfE Green Formulation Initiative is developing a database of industrial and institutional cleaning product ingredients and their characteristics to help formulators identify ingredients that may be useful for green product formulations and to provide opportunity for manufacturers of cleaning ingredients to showcase their ingredients with environmental attributes.

Key words: Design for the Environment, Formulation, Hazard assessment