My guest today is Mike Schade, Mind the Store Campaign Director at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. The Mind the Store campaign works with the nation’s leading retailers on creating comprehensive chemicals policy. For the previous eight years, Mike was the Markets Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), a national environmental health organization where he led national campaigns to phase out PVC plastic, phthalates, BPA and dioxin. Prior to CHEJ, he was the Western New York Director of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition. Ethisphere Magazine listed Mike as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics for 2007 and the PVC Campaign received two awards from the Business Ethics Network. www.saferchemicals.org

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
What Major Retailers Are Doing (or Not) to Reduce Toxic Chemicals in the Products They Sell

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Mike Schade

Date of Broadcast: March 26, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and how to live toxic free.

It’s Wednesday, March 26th 2014. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And today, we’re going to be talking about what major retailers are doing (or not doing) to reduce toxic chemicals in the products that they sell.

For the past year, there’s been a campaign called Mind the Store. It’s being done by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. And they’ve been asking the major retailers in America to remove certain toxic chemicals from the store shelves, so that we don’t have to be reading all the labels. We can just know that these products are safe.

And today, I have the campaign director of this campaign here to tell us about what’s going on. His name is Mike Schade from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

Hi Mike!

MIKE SCHADE: Hey, Debra. Thanks for having me.

DEBRA: Now, Mike has been on before. Some of you might remember him. He was on for the Center for Environmental Health Injustice. Did I get all those words in the right order?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Actually, it’s the Center for Health and Environmental Justice.

DEBRA: Health and Environmental Justice, right.

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah.

DEBRA: And he is now over at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families during the Mind the Store campaign.

Mike, tell us about the campaign.

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, great. Well, thanks again for having me. It’s always a pleasure to come on your show. I really appreciate it.

DEBRA: Thank you.

MIKE SCHADE: So, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families…

DEBRA: Just give us the general idea of it. And then we’ll talk about it in great detail.

MIKE SCHADE: So, we’re a broad coalition of public health organizations, environmental organizations, advocates for people with developmental disabilities, reproductive health advocates and others that are united about our concern about toxic chemicals in our homes, schools and places of work—and most importantly, the products we use every day, products we bring in our homes (cosmetics, cleaning products, plastics, you name it).

And in recent years, some of the most effective ways that, here in the United States, have taken action to address chemicals of concern is through the actions of major corporations, huge Fortune 500 companies.

So Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families launched the Mind the Store campaign with the recognition that major retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and others really have the power and the moral responsibility to ensure that the products that they sell are safe and healthy and non-toxic.

So, we launched the Mind the Store campaign to challenge major US retailers, the top 10 retailers with the biggest market share to get tough on toxic chemicals and to work with their suppliers and their vendors to eliminate the worst of the worst chemicals and the product that they sell, what we call the Hazardous 100 List of Chemicals of High Concern. And these are chemicals that are linked to cancer, birth defect, asthma, and other serious health problems that affect our communities across the country.

DEBRA: Thank you.

So, I had a question. It’s on the tip of my tongue. And now I forgot what it was.

Okay! So, you started out—I know that Washington Toxics Coalition did a report that had showed where a lot of chemical hazards were in the products. Why don’t you start by telling us about that report? Wasn’t that the beginning of this campaign?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah! So, as you know, because unfortunately our federal chemical safety system is broken, many states have been forced to figure out how to deal with this challenge of dangerous chemicals and products in our environment.

So, in recent years, the number of states—most notably, the states of California, Maine and Washington—have passed pieces of legislation that begin to comprehensively address the problems of chemicals in the environment. So, we’re not just banning or restricting one chemical at a time. These states have passed more comprehensive approaches to chemical policy.

Back in 2008, the state of Washington passed a landmark piece of legislation called The Children Safe Products Act. This is a law that requires manufacturers and retailers to disclose to the state of California whether products that they sell in the state of California contains chemicals of high concern for children.

DEBRA: Wait, wait! Washington?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, this is the state of Washingtont, that’s right.

DEBRA: Yeah, you said California.

MIKE SCHADE: Oh, I’m sorry, the state of Washington. And this is back in 2008. And so if you are a company that sells a product to the state of Washington, you need to report whether this product contains one of these 66 chemicals of high concern. This includes chemicals like formaldehyde, bisphenol-A, phthalates, flame retardants and many of the other well-known bad guys.

So, in the past couple of years, companies have begun to report in accordance with this law. And we just co-published a report with our friends at the Washington Toxics Coalition which found that, as a result of this reporting law, companies are reporting chemicals of high concern in all sorts of consumer products. There were over 4600 reports of toxic chemicals in children’s products.

For example, they found formaldehyde in children’s table wear and dangerous flame retardants in car seats and toys.
And so, this just goes to show you how chemicals of high concern are widespread in products that we purchase, in products for our children. And of course, many of these chemicals in products were being reported by major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target.

So, if you go to our friends at the Washington Toxics Coalition, their website, you can actually download this report. And the website is WAToxics.org.

I think it’s important because this report just shows how widespread this problem is and also how important it is for retailers to clean up their act and get touch on toxic chemicals in products that they sell, and also how, unfortunately, government regulation is—while the state of Washington is playing a significant leadership role in requiring disclosure of chemicals of concern, it’s clear that the Washington state can’t do it alone and we need other states. Most importantly, we need the federal government to act and to regulate dangerous chemicals in products, particularly those for children and infants.

DEBRA: I completely agree, yes. I’ve been reporting to consumers for the past 30+ years about the toxic chemicals I can identify in products and saying, “Here are some products that don’t contain those chemicals.” And so consumer can make those choices.

And I would say that over the last 30 years, there definitely has been an increase in toxic-free products available for consumers to choose. But we also need to have, at every level—at the retailer level, at the manufacturer level, at the government level—everybody needs to be saying, “We need to get rid of these toxic chemicals.”

I mean, if you really think about it, the most dangerous thing in the world is we’re all trying to take vitamins and eat well and exercise and do all these things for our health, but there are so many toxic chemicals that we can’t control because they’re there at levels that we don’t have any control over.

And so, everybody needs to say, “At the level that I’m at, whether I’m a retailer or a manufacturer, a government employee or a consumer,” each one of us needs to say, “How can I reduce toxic chemicals where I am?” I think it’s excellent that you’re doing this.

So, when we come back, I want to ask you a question. We’re very close to the break, so I don’t want you to get started. But when we come back, we’re going to talk about the toxic chemicals, the Hazardous 100, and what kinds of things you can do.

We’re going to talk about the top 10 retailers that are being targeted in this campaign and how they are responding (or not) and all different kinds of things that you can do.

If you want to go to the Mind the Store website, you can just go to SaferChemicals.org, and right there on their home page, there’s a little button that says Mind the Store. You just click on that, and that’ll take you to all the different information that’s coming up.

So, we’re almost there. I watch the clock. We just have to go with the break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the Mind the Store campaign director at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

And we’ll be right back!

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the campaign director of Mind the Store at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. And their website is SaferChemicals.org.

Mike, this whole thing is based on a list you call The Hazardous 100+ which is a list of chemicals that you’ve given to these retailers where you’re saying, “We don’t want these chemicals in products on store shelves.”

So, can you tell us how the Hazardous 100 Chemicals List was developed?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, thank you. I’d be happy to.

So, we’ve developed this list for a couple of different reasons, a couple of different ways. One of the key reasons we developed this list is because, over the past 10 years, manufacturers and retailers had gone about addressing chemicals of concern in almost like a whack-a-mole fashion where they will restrict or ban one chemical, and then a few months later, another one is in the media.

This has been effective to a certain extent in getting, for example, BPA out of baby bottles and lead out of kids’ toys and phthalates out of baby products. But it really fails to address chemicals of concern in a more comprehensive fashion.

If you look at the scope of the problem with over 85,000 chemicals on the market, we really needed to begin addressing chemicals in a more systematic and widespread approach.

So, we develop the Hazardous 100 list as a way to give retailers and manufacturers a starting place to work from. It represents a small subset of inherently hazardous chemicals of concern to which people, children, pregnant women, families, are regularly being exposed to.

We developed this list by looking at different authoritative government agencies across the country and across the world and what have they identified as chemicals of high concern. As we mentioned earlier, states have really been at the forefront of regulating and addressing chemicals, dangerous chemicals in products.

And over the past five or ten years, a number of states has developed a list of chemicals of concern—the states of California, Washington, Maine, Minnesotta. The USCTA has developed a [00:12:12] substances that they’re concerned about. And in Europe, there’s a law called REACH where they’ve identified chemicals of high concern that are subject to eventual regulation and phase-out.

So, basically, what we did is we combined all these different lists together, these different state, federal and international list, and then we looked at where are chemicals commonly found on these lists. If a chemical shows up on at least two of these lists, we added them to the Hazardous 100 list.

And then, we also added some additional chemicals, chemicals that perhaps the government agency hasn’t identified yet, but we know are problematic—for example, perfluorinated chemicals which are used in Teflon.

So, that’s how we came up with this list. And what we’re doing is we’re encouraging retailers and manufacturers to work with our suppliers to eliminate the Hazardous 100 List of Chemicals of High Concern. And if you go to our website at SaferChemicals.org, you can download and check out the list and see examples of some of the chemicals that are on that list.

DEBRA: I think it’s a great list. When we did a show on this before last year, I downloaded the list. I’ve been looking at the list and considering what I can do from my viewpoint as a consumer advocate to be identifying safer alternatives to those chemicals.

One of the things that I came up with—I mean, first of all, this is the place to start. I remember many, many years ago, when I was looking at how could I reduce my own personal exposure to toxic chemicals, the first thing that I did was to try to identify what the toxic chemicals were that I wanted to not be exposed to.

And at that time—I’ve said this many times on this show—and at that time, I’ve identified 40 chemicals. But that was way back in—what was it—1882. We didn’t have all the information that we have today at about what are the toxic chemicals.

But I identified 40 and I did a really good job of finding where those 40 chemicals were and finding alternatives.

But I also say that it seem to me that what I’ve learned over the years was that if you just kind of jump out of the chemical way of doing things—for example, instead of eating industrial food, eating organic food—you’re not just eliminating one of those toxic chemicals, you’re eliminating a whole set of them.

And so, I’m always looking for how can we jump to what is the non-toxic thing to do. You see what I’m saying?

MIKE SCHADE: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah! I mean, thankfully, there are simple steps that we can take as consumers to significantly reduce our exposure to chemicals of concern. So, like you said, there are things you can do like, for example, eating local foods that you buy say at farmer’s market or from a local grocer instead of buying pesticide-laden foods. So yeah, there’s definitely things that you can do.

And actually, on our website, we actually have a list of top tips that you can do to keep toxic chemicals at bay.

So it’s true that, as consumers, we can definitely take action. But on the other hand, we can’t just shop our way out of this problem. We really need retailers and manufacturers to step up, and we also need the government to step up and do their job and restrict and eliminate chemicals when we know that they’re linked to cancer and birth defects and other serious health problems—especially when we know that there are safer alternatives available.

DEBRA: I totally agree! So, why is it then that retailers aren’t just saying, “Well, for example, we could eliminate a lot of pesticides if we offer organic food.” I know some retailers are doing that. But why aren’t they just saying, “Well, okay, let’s just jump on the bandwagon and do this”?

The alternatives are there. It’s not like each retailer needs to go through and say, “How can I eliminate each one of these 100 chemicals?” There already are products that they could have on their shelves—and they aren’t there.

MIKE SCHADE: Well, the good news is that retailers are beginning to wake up and take action. Just this past year, both Target and Wal-Mart have actually taken pretty significant steps to begin to address toxic chemicals. Both Wal-Mart and Target announced their chemical policies this past fall. And just a couple of weeks ago, Wal-Mart actually announced a pretty significant update.

DEBRA: And I want to hear all about that after the break.

MIKE SCHADE: Great!

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the campaign director of Mind the Store campaign at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. That’s SaferChemicals.org. We’ll be right back!

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the campaign director at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families for their Mind the Store campaign.

Mike, what are the 10 retailers that you’ve approached?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah! We’re encouraging the top 10 retailers with the biggest market share to take action. There’s Wal-Mart, Kroger, Target, Walgreens, Costco, The Home Depot, CVS, Lowe’s, Best Buy and Safeway. These are retailers that sell all sorts of products that often contain chemicals of high concern, whether it’s in food packaging or whether it’s in children’s toys or even in building materials that we bring into our homes and schools.

DEBRA: Well, I’ve been to a lot of these stores—not Kroger’s because they’re local to a certain area of the country. They don’t have them here or in California where I used to live. But let’s see the other ones on the list. We have CVS here in Florida, Lowe’s, Best Buy. Safeway, they have in California where I used to live, but not here in Florida.

But I would say that out of this list of places—I mean, some of these, I shop and I find things that aren’t toxic. There are some of these that I think have more awareness than others.

And I would actually say that Target is one where I can find a lot of things that don’t have toxic chemicals. There are still a lot of things with toxic chemicals, but Target is a place.

Costco, particularly—a lot of the organic food that I eat, I buy at Costco because they have things like organic chicken that costs half as much the same brand. It costs half as much at Costco as it does in my natural food store. They have a lot of organic food, things like rice and staple foods—not fresh produce, but staple foods—that are organic.

And Home Depot has a lot of non-toxic building products. But Lowe’s has even more. If I want to find something like a less toxic wood finish, I go to Lowe’s.

So, some of these, I think, are already on the right track. But I think all of them need to improve.

So, before the break, you said that Wal-Mart just changed their policy. What are they doing now?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah! So, different retailers are at different stages. And surprisingly, Wal-Mart is actually arguably—in addition to Target, Wal-Mart and Target are really leading the charge in developing comprehensive chemical policies.
Wal-Mart is doing a number of interesting things. One, on disclosure, they’re actually requiring their suppliers to fully disclose chemical ingredients in products—not all of the products, but certain products (cosmetics, cleaning products, baby products, pet toys and some other product areas). They’re going to require the companies disclose chemical ingredients online as of January 2015.

DEBRA: Wow! Oh, my God!

MIKE SCHADE: January 2015, yup. And then, beginning January 2018, if the company still sells products that contain what Wal-Mart describes as “priority chemicals of concern,” companies will be required to put those ingredients on the product label.

And this is huge because, as you know, Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the world. Companies are probably not going to want to have to publicly disclose whether they sell, say, for example, a baby bottle or shampoo for your child if it contains a chemical that’s known to cause cancer or other health problems.

So, this really provides a huge incentive for manufacturers, supplies that sell to Wal-Mart to eliminate chemicals of concern.

So, they’re doing a lot of really great things on disclosure.

They initially developed a list of 10 high priority chemicals of concern. And they recently expanded that. They’ve developed a much broader list of chemicals of concern which literally includes thousands of substances, chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. And it includes every single one of the chemicals on our Hazardous 100 List and much, much more—which is pretty interesting.

So, if you sell to Wal-Mart, you’ll not only be encouraged to disclose whether your products contain these chemicals, but Wal-Mart is calling on their suppliers to reduce, eliminate and restrict these chemicals, and then also to not just move from one bad chemical to another, but to try to ensure that substitutes are actually safe.

So, they’re encouraging their suppliers to get off what we call the “toxic treadmill” and to really assess the safety of alternative ingredients which is pretty significant.

And in their expanded guide which they just published a couple of weeks ago, they are calling on their suppliers to embrace concepts of informed substitution and alternative assessment which basically means that if you’re going to replace one hazardous chemical, you want to make sure that you’re not replacing it with another that also has a similar hazard profile.

So, this is all really exciting stuff, especially given the sheer magnitude and market impact that a big retailer like Wal-Mart has. And the good news is they’re also going to be publicly reporting on their progress in doing so. And they’re going to be tracking how their suppliers and vendors actually meet this new policy.

They’re going to look at how many suppliers sell products that contain these chemicals. They’re going to look at reduction of chemicals over time. They’re going to look at sales volume, weight volume.

So it’s really quite significant. This really has the potential to seriously send shockwaves through global supply chains and to really provide a major incentives for big brands to eliminate dangerous chemicals that are commonly found in products and store shelves.

DEBRA: All I can say is, “Wow! Wow…”

MIKE SCHADE: That was my first reaction as well. It’s amazing! Typically, a retailer, you don’t expect to be leading a charge on an issue like this, but they’re actually doing some pretty significant things.

And of course, there’s room for improvement, and there are things that they’re not doing that we’d like them to do. But we think this is a really major step in the right direction. We’re hopeful that Wal-Mart will continue to improve this policy over time and we’re also hopeful that other retailers will now join them in taking action. Wal-Mart can’t do it alone. We need other retailers to join the bandwagon and get tough on toxics.

DEBRA: Well, I agree! They all need to band together. And it would actually be great if all your 10 retailers would get together and say, “We’re all going to have the same policy. We’re all going to get a policy that’s as good as possible” and that they’ll all apply it, so that no matter where a manufacturer goes, all the retailers would say, “No, you have to meet this policy.”

MIKE SCHADE: Absolutely! And it’s not just Wal-Mart. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Target has also announced a pretty significant chemicals policy. They announced that this fall, when their policy is—it’s similar to Wal-Mart in many ways.

They’re requiring suppliers to disclose chemicals of concern through an online database.

They’ve also identified a list of over a thousand substances of concern. I don’t think their list is as big as Wal-Mart’s, but it is very significant. And they are going to be tracking how suppliers follow this policy because they’re requiring disclosure online through a system called The Good Guide.

DEBRA: Wow! We’ll be right back after the break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the campaign director of Mind the Store campaign at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families which is at SaferChemicals.org. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Mike Schade. He’s the campaign director of the Mind the Store campaign at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. And that’s SaferChemicals.org.

And just right on that home page, you can look for the Mind the Store campaign image, that little button. You can just click right there and find out more about all the things that we’re talking about.

Mike, is there any plans by Wal-Mart or Target in their plan to somehow identify products that have been reviewed for toxicity so that consumers can identify those products on the shelves like shelf talkers or stickers on the product or something like that? How will consumers know which ones passed?

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Well, both Wal-Mart and Target are pushing their suppliers on disclosure and transparency which we think is a huge issue. When you are shopping, oftentimes, products are not labeled whether they contain chemicals of concern.

So, Target’s program is really an incentive program. They’re going to be ranking their suppliers on a number of different issues. And transparency is a big one for Target. So if a supplier discloses chemicals of concern online or on the product label, Target will give more preferential treatment to suppliers that are being transparent about chemicals of concern in their products.

To a certain extent, Wal-Mart is going a little bit further in that they’re providing a clear timeframe for transparency. So, as I’ve mentioned before, by January 2015, Wal-Mart is requiring suppliers to disclose chemicals of high concern on company websites. So if you go and wanted to find out if a certain product made by Proctor & Gamble or SC Johnson or whoever contains X or Y chemical, you can go to that company website and find that out.

And then, by January 2018—which it seems far away, but as we know, time flies, and it’s really not that long from now—

DEBRA: Well, it’s better January 2018 than never.

MIKE SCHADE: Totally! Absolutely, yeah. I mean this issue is not going away any time soon unfortunately. So, by 2018, if a company still sells a product to Wal-Mart and it contains a chemical of high concern or a chemical of concern (which again includes thousands of substances), then that company will be required to label the product on store shelves. And I think this is pretty significant.

DEBRA: So, wait, wait, wait. The company will be required to label the product that it contains hazardous chemicals. It’s not entirely clear in terms of what that label will look like.

But the thing that I think is perfectly notable about this is if you’re a manufacturer, you probably don’t want to have to create a different label for just Wal-Mart. It’s probably likely that if you’re going to change the packaging of your product, you would change it for all of your suppliers.

So, we are hopeful this will have a huge, major, spiraling effect across brands throughout global supply chains—not just in the US, but internationally as well. It’s not enough, but it sure as heck is a step in the right direction.

And I think what’s particularly significant about this Wal-Mart announcement is they’re also focusing on fragrance which, as I’m sure you well know, is a huge issue for cleaning products and for cosmetics products because that’s often where nasty substances are found. Chemical like phthalates are often found in fragrances. And most fragrances are usually never labeled.

And so the fact that they’re pushing the envelope on disclosure especially for fragrances I think, hopefully, that’ll have big ripple effects through global supply chains.

But the question is: “Will their suppliers listen?” I think that’s a question that we’re going to be paying very close attention to in the years to come because we want to make sure that their suppliers and vendors are actually complying with their policy as well as Target’s new policy. And at the same time, we’re going to be working really hard to get other retailers like Walgreens, for example, to join them in taking action on dangerous chemicals and their supply chains.

DEBRA: So, I think what you’re saying is that by 2018, Wal-Mart will still be selling toxic products, but they have to be clearly labeled that there are chemicals in them and what those toxic chemicals are which is a big improvement on what we have now?

But this is where consumers can then say, “Well, now we can clearly identify there’s a toxic chemical in there and not buy it.”

And what will happen is if consumers who shop at Wal-Mart don’t buy those products, you can be sure that Wal-Mart will take them off the shelf if they are not purchased.

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah. And again, they’re not only requiring disclosure, but they’re also encouraging their suppliers to reduce, restrict and eliminate chemicals of concern. So there’s a really strong incentive for manufacturers and vendors to not only disclose chemical ingredients, but more importantly, to eliminate them because if you’re a manufacturer, like I’ve said before, you probably don’t want to have to put a label on your baby bath or whatever it is saying that this contains a chemical into asthma and birth defects. That’s the last thing that any brand would want to do because they would provide an incentive for a parent, a mom to not buy that product for their child, for their baby.

DEBRA: But we already have a labeling system. Especially on cleaning products, we have to put warning labels and pesticides and paints and things like that where they are very toxic products. And yet people are just buying them anyway.

And they don’t even look at those danger signals.

So, you would think that it would be a deterrent if those kinds of warnings were required on the label. We already have them and people aren’t deterred. They still make them. They still sell them at retail stores. And consumers still buy them.

So, I think there needs to be a lot of education as well. I think that still despite 30 years of my writing books and speaking out on this subject and all of your work, there are still consumers who don’t know there’s a problem.

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s really important for consumers to take action on this issue. We encourage if you’re a consumer and you’re out shopping, you should speak to the store manager if you’re at a retailer or if you’re at Best Buy or Walgreens or any other major retailer to take action. Speak with the store manager, and let them know that this is an issue that you’re concerned about.

You’re concerned about the fact that their store likely still sell many products that contain chemicals that are harmful for children, that are harmful for pregnant women, that are harmful for women of vulnerable age.

You could actually even go to our website at MindtheStore.org or SaferChemicals.org and actually send a quick email to retailers and tell them that you’d like them to take action to get dangerous chemicals out of their products.

Another thing you can do is to plan a retailer rendezvous. Get together with a bunch of your friends. We actually have a toolkit on our website you can download. Go to the retailer together with some of your friends and family and put together a little event.

DEBRA: Wait, wait! Tell us more about the retailer rendezvous, about how that goes. Maybe some people listening will want to do that.

MIKE SCHADE: Yeah, yeah. The retailer rendezvous is a really fun way for folks to take action. The idea is that we want to get retailers to come up with policies to take action on toxic chemicals.

So, the first way to plan a retailer rendezvous is to send an email to your friends and ask them if they’d be interested in joining you to visit your local big box retailer—Walgreens or Best Buy or whoever it is. Figure out a date and time that would be convenient for all of you guys to get together. You can go to our website and print off sample copies of letters that we’ve sent to retailers. Figure out when and where you guys would want to meet, and then set up a time to meet with the store manager and have a conversation with them about why as a consumer or why as a parent you’re concerned about this issue.

We think that store managers really have a unique place of power. And what we’re doing is we’re trying to get store managers to relay a message to their regional managers and corporate headquarters that this is an issue that customers are asking them about.

We actually have a whole toolkit on our website. If you go to MindtheStore.org and you click on the “take action” button, you can download a simple guide, Retailer Rendezvous Toolkit which has information on how to plan one of these events.

I’ve done one myself. We’ve had some of our blogger friends, some of our green blogger friends do them over time. We have talking points in the Retailer Rendezvous Toolkit. We have frequently asked questions. We make it really simple and easy to do this.

And like I said, it could be really, really effective because, oftentimes, retailers will listen to the sorts of questions or comments that they hear from their customers. This could be a really effective way to convey a message that we want retailers to take action and get tough on toxics.

Especially if you could go to one of the retailers that has not taken action yet like a Best Buy or a Walgreens. That could be particularly effective. Since Wal-Mart and Target are beginning to take action, we like to see other retailers like Best Buy and Walgreens to join them and to mind their store and to develop a plan to eliminate harmful chemicals in their products.

So, Walgreens, for example, they’re the largest drugstore chain in the country. And they are, unfortunately, falling behind.

They are lagging behind Target and other retailers. So, this year, we’re hopeful that Walgreens will join Target, Wal-Mart and others to get tough on toxics.

DEBRA: Mike, I’m sorry to interrupt you. There’s so much we could talk about, but we’re coming to the end of the show, and pretty soon, the music is going to come on and cut you off.

So, thank you so much for being with me today. So much great information! And again, the website is SaferChemicals.org.

You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

My guest today is Liz Harriman, Deputy Director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’ll be talking about what businesses, community organizations and government agencies are doing to reduce the use of toxic chemicals to protect public health and the environment. As Deputy Director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, Liz Harriman is responsible for managing the operations and technical functions of the Institute, as well as working with the other TURA agencies to set direction for the program. In her 20+ years working at the Institute, she has provided technical research and support services to Massachusetts companies with the goal of identifying safer alternatives to toxic chemicals used in manufacturing and products. Recent technical work includes prioritization and hazard evaluation of chemicals, chemical alternatives assessment, and flame retardants. Ms. Harriman is a registered Professional Engineer and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Cornell University in Civil Engineering and a Master’s degree in Hazardous Materials Management from Tufts University. www.turi.org

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Organizations are Reducing Toxic Chemicals to Protect Public Health

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Liz Harriman

Date of Broadcast: March 24, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. Today is Monday, March 24th 2014. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. and we’re going to be talking about how organizations are reducing toxic chemicals to protect public health.

It’s not just us consumers who are concerned with that, but there are businesses and organizations and all kinds of groups who are looking for ways to reduce our toxic chemical exposure, and then it gets passed on to you.

But before I introduce my guests, I just want to say that, over the weekend, I actually received some e-mails from some listeners. And I just wanted to say that I would love to hear from all of you. Anybody who wants to write to me, just please go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and at the bottom of the page, there’s a form where you can send me an e-mail, and I would love to hear from you.

I’d love to hear how you like the show, what you like, what your favorite show is, guests that you’d like to have on, anything that you want to tell me about the show to make it better or just say thank you, say hello, whatever you’d like.

Please feel free to just write to me. I would love to hear from you. It’s ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can just go there and say whatever you want to say. There’s a form at the bottom of the page.

So, my guest today is Liz Harriman. She’s the deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. And what she does is that she helps businesses and organizations, community organizations, and government agencies, to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, so that they can protect public health and the environment.

Hi Liz! Thanks for being with us.

Respondent: Hello! Thank you for inviting me.

DEBRA: So first, tell us what is the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. What do you do?

Liz Harriman: So, the institute is part of the Massachusetts Toxic Use Reduction Program. And that is a program that was passed into law in 1989. It requires manufacturers to submit to the state annually how much they’re using in toxic chemicals, and also mandates that they do a planning process every other year on the chemicals that they use.

The law doesn’t make companies do anything in terms of changing their practices. But it does ask them to evaluate the chemicals they use and figure out why they’re using them, how much they’re using, and whether there are safer alternatives or ways they can reduce their use.

And when companies do that process of evaluation, then they normally will find good opportunities and find that those will save them money. And so they’ll go ahead and implement them. It’s all really voluntary in terms of what they end up doing, but they’re required to go through that on a bi-annual planning process.

So, our program has been around for more than 20 years. And companies have been going through this process and have made a lot of progress. The first decade, they reduced their use by about 33% and their releases to the environment by 85% and about 50% in waste reduction.

And then, the second decade, you would think, “Okay, they’ve gotten all the low-hanging fruit. Maybe there really isn’t anything more to do.” But as it happens, there is still more to do. They find more opportunities continually, so that the second decade, they’re still reducing use by 22%, waste by 33% and emissions to the environment by an additional 65%.

There’s been huge progress over the last 20 years in Massachusetts and, to a good extent, in many other states as well. Most states don’t track their chemical use. They just track their emissions and waste reduction via a federal program. But in Massachusetts, [00:04:08] requires them to also track their use and allows that information to be out in the public.

So, truly, involvement in the program [00:04:17] responsible for our education and training and research and laboratory testing and doing a number of different things with industry sectors and communities and others, producing a lot of information products [00:04:31] to help the companies and the community groups, the municipalities and everyone figure out what good options they might have to reduce the [00:04:40] toxic chemicals in the Commonwealth.

Interviewer: Wow! Wow. What a great program! What a great program! How many other states are doing this?
Respondent: There are a number of states that have some part of this criminal law. But there is no other state that has the same thing [00:05:05].

There are some other states that require companies that use certain types of chemicals to do a pollution prevention planning process (which is similar to the Toxic Use Reduction Process) and there are some states that collect some information on you. But no one else has it kind of wrapped up in the same package [00:05:25].

The other thing about the law in Massachusetts is that companies have to pay a fee when they file that annual report. And so those fees go to support the implementation agencies. So that’s TURI here at UMass Lowell. And there’s also an Office of Technical Assistance which provides direct, on-site, confidential assistance to companies.

And that’s at our Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. And then, there’s a part of our Department of Environmental Protection that does the regulatory work.

So, the [00:05:55] return services back to all those companies that paid the fees. That has kept the program very vital and engaged, when in some states, these similar programs have sort of languished because of lack of funding at the state.

DEBRA: Yeah. Wow! Well, it sounds like that you’ve got it all figured out in Massachusetts to actually be doing this—and are doing it successfully. That’s very impressive. I would like all the states to do that.

How did you get interested in working in the field of toxic chemicals, you personally? I see on your bio that you are a professional engineer. I don’t know all the different jobs one might have in this field. So what does a professional engineer do? How did you get interested in working in this field?

Liz Harriman: I guess like many people today, I’ve had more than one career. So I started out as a structural engineer. I was a civil engineer in college. I did structural engineering which is about designing buildings and bridges and things like that for about 10 years. It was fun. And I really enjoyed it. But I felt like I was taking down trees and putting up buildings, and perhaps not leaving the mark I wanted to leave on the planet.

So, I went back to school at Tufts University. I’ve gone to Cornell is an undergrad. I went back to Tuft in a program on Hazardous Materials Management. I learned all about hazardous chemicals and what could be done to prevent their use.

And after that, I came to work here at the very new (at that point) Toxics Use Reduction Institute. And I have been here ever since. It’s very, very rewarding work, which is why I’m still here.

DEBRA: I find it very rewarding too. I feel that if there is one thing that causes the most harm in the world, it’s toxic chemical exposure. And every time I do something to help there be less of that in the world, I know that I’m making the world a better place. I can imagine how rewarding it might be for you and everybody there.

Wow! There’s so much to talk about. I’ve been looking at your website, and there’s so much here. So I’m trying to figure out where to start.

Well, first, let me just tell everybody that you can go to their website. It’s TURI.org. Why don’t you give us just a little tour of what people will find on the website because there’s so much information.

Liz Harriman: Sure! We recently re-did the website a little bit. So hopefully, it’ll be easy for your listeners to navigate.

If they go to at the top tab that says ‘Our Work’, then it has different sections on the different things that TURI is responsible for under the law (i.e. training).

And it has a section on grants. We provide grants to companies, to academic researchers to come up with new innovative solutions for things that companies don’t already have safer alternatives for.

And we have a section on business, which you’ll find information on different industry sectors and things that are going on with them;

Toxic chemical sections where there are some basic information about the chemicals that are regulated under the TURI Act, and also, what things our Science Advisory Board might be looking at, what’s on the list that our Science Advisory Board believes are more hazardous or less hazardous things on the list;

There’s a section on Green Cleaning which has information about our Surface Cleaning Lab where they do both parts cleaning for industry (like solvent degreasing), and also research safer methods for janitorial cleaning.

DEBRA: Liz, we need to go to break. But we’ll talk more about this when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: I want to start with telling our listeners where to go. They definitely want to see this in the future or whenever they listening because I think a lot of people are listening online. At TURI.org, it’s under [00:10:28] tab, and I chose ‘Toxic Chemicals.’

Now, one of the thing that I would say from my viewpoint of [00:10:38] is there’s a basic process that one might go through to lessen the amount of toxic chemicals that they use. And that’s the same whether they’re an individual listening to this for an organization. And it’s basically to identify some toxic chemicals that are toxic [00:11:04] have less exposure.

And then—hold on just second. I shouldn’t have [00:11:15]. Just say something for a second.

Liz Harriman: You’re sounding a little bit garbled.

DEBRA: Okay, is that better?

Liz Harriman: That’s much better.

DEBRA: Okay! There’s something wrong with my mic. And every once in a while, I have to just unplug it and plug it back in. So now, we’re back.

Liz Harriman: That’s wonderful! It’s very clear now.

DEBRA: Okay, at least I know what the problem is.

So, the first thing is to identify some toxic chemicals that you might want to reduce the use of. And then, you need to find alternatives. So it’s basically those two steps.

You have—what I chose was ‘Toxic Chemicals’ and I’m looking at a page called ‘Chemical Lists’. I’d like you to talk to us about how one chooses, how one finds out what are the toxic chemicals that you would want to reduce in your life?

So, I understand that some of these chemicals—I guess all of these—have been determined by law in the state of Massachusetts for businesses. But tell us how they came to those decisions.

Liz Harriman: So, I won’t say that the chemical list is our pride and joy. It was established in 1989 when the law was first passed. And it consists primarily of chemicals that are from the Federal Toxics Release Inventory which was a list generated originally in 1987, and then updated a few times through the 1990s. But it has not been well-maintained since then.

We also include chemicals from the CERCLA list which is the Superfund list. And so that broadens it somewhat more than the Federal Toxics Relase Inventory. But the list really is in need of being updated for chemicals that are more widely-used now and chemicals that we now have more information about than we had back then.

DEBRA: I would agree with you. I mean, I’ve been looking at listed chemicals for more than 30 years. And when I go back and looked at the first time I wrote a book, I chose 40 chemicals. Forty, I have to laugh at that now. But they were the 40 chemicals that I could identify back in 1982 as being toxic chemicals in consumer products. I didn’t have any lists to go to then in 1982. I just needed to kind of look and dig and find and see where the toxic chemicals were, and I identified 40.

And as you’ve said, I’ve observed exactly the same thing, that we have more information now, and there are new chemicals that are being used, things that we didn’t even think about before.

And we also not only have more information, but we have more understanding. Thirty years ago, we didn’t know what an endocrine disruptor was. We didn’t even think about the endocrine system. When I started, the only thing I was looking at was, “Was it toxic to my immune system?” And now, a few years ago when I wrote my latest book, Toxic Free, I looked at everything again, and I realized that you can now associate toxic chemical exposure with every body system. It can affect every single body system all the way down to your DNA.

We didn’t know that 30 years ago.

Liz Harriman: Right! And what I will say about endocrine disruption is that we still don’t know a lot about it. It’s definitely an emerging science. It’s something that we know is a problem and we know exists. We know some substances that cause it. But the federal government and international agencies are still researching and debating about how best to identify and say, “This chemical causes endocrine disruption.” It’s definitely sort of a spectrum from weak to strong, and where you cut that off and say, “This one is an endocrine disruptor.” So it’s certainly still up for debate (which is one of the reasons why a lot of those substances aren’t on the lists yet).

DEBRA: I was just going to ask.

Liz Harriman: The other thing I would say is that [00:15:34] is really geared towards manufacturers and industry.

So there are many chemicals that are of concern in consumer products that might not be the biggest concern for our manufacturing base. So you’ll see a lot of chemicals in there that you would never find in a consumer product.

They’re intermediate or processing chemical.

DEBRA: Right! So, they are things used in the manufacture of consumer products, but they’re not necessarily chemicals that would be shown on the label because they’re not the end result. Is that correct?

Liz Harriman: Right. So, there are some other lists out there that are perhaps more up-to-date and not always regulatory. But there are things like the SIN List, the Substitute It Now list in Europe which has a lot more things geared towards consumer products and chemicals that are of concern to the public end consumers. California and Maine and Washington state have all developed lists of chemicals of concern in children’s products or in consumer product. And so those are things that are more relevant for that particular end point.

But they’re still having trouble with the fact that there’s an overwhelming number of chemicals that they could be working on.

DEBRA: I think that that is one of the challenges, just the sheer number of chemicals. And we’re going to talk about that when we come back from the break.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Liz Harriman from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. We’re talking about toxic chemicals. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Liz Harriman. She’s the deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Their website is TURI.org.

Okay, Liz, before the break, we were talking about the sheer number of toxic chemicals. And so, I don’t even know how many toxic chemical there are. Often, people will say there’s 80,000 toxic chemicals in use. I know that there’s the CAS site where you go and register your toxic chemical (or your chemical, whether it’s toxic or not). It has millions! The number is in the millions.

And so, how do you go from looking at this immensity of chemicals to choosing something that you can actually do in daily life?

Liz Harriman: Yeah, there have been several efforts to try to distill down that volume of information. And there are something like 60,000 to 80,000 chemicals that may be currently in commerce. But they aren’t all toxic or there are certainly degrees of toxicity among them.

Again, some states like Maine and Washington have done a prioritization process of all the chemicals that they could identify with information—so does Canada. Maine came out with a list of 1400 chemicals of concern, and then narrowed that down further to—some of them, high concern for children. Washington did something kind of similar. So, there are ways to try to focus in.

And I wanted to add that for the existing list, particularly in the U.S., but the main categories of things that are missing, I think one of them are phthalates which are the softeners that are in plastics. There are many, many different ones, and there are only a few that are really part of our law and many other laws.

And so, in Massachusetts, we have our Science Advisory Board trying to look at that class of chemicals, things like flame retardants. There are very, very few flame retardants on the list, and there are many, many toxicity issues.

They are coming out with more and more slightly different chemicals all the time with flame retardants and those are not regulated well at all.

Anti-microbials is another class that is not very well-regulated. So there’s really a lot of work that needs to be done.

And again, programs like ours are trying to have our Science Advisory Board look at these things and try to figure out what should be in the list. But it’s a very slow process. It really needs to be done I think at the federal level.

And that just hasn’t been happening.

DEBRA: I agree with you. I’m really trying to look at the big picture and see what everybody is doing. I’ve obviously had a lot of guests on this show doing different aspects of it. But I mean, I started out 30 years ago saying, “Well, I’m just one consumer, and I don’t want to have toxic chemicals in my products. Where do I find out information?” and there was none. And so, I had to just figure out as best I could. I mean, I never even took chemistry in school.

Liz Harriman: I wouldn’t know that from reading your book.

DEBRA: Thank you. But I became interested in chemistry in my 20’s. I started becoming interested in this subject.

I taught myself chemistry by reading it.

Here’s how I actually started.

I bought a book I still have on my shelf called the Condensed Chemical Dictionary. I would just find a chemical, like say formaldehyde, I would look it up, and it would tell me, “Well, here’s some health effects. Here’s how formaldehyde is made.”

And then, I’d look up the next chemical. I was trying to understand the definition. I just look up chemical after chemical after chemical.

And now, I would say that working with this information every day for more than 30 years, I probably know more about chemicals and their health effects and what classification they are and all those things than most average consumers. But we really need to know this information.

But I still find that I’m having difficulty finding the authoritative place to go where I know that all this information has been looked at and there are some prioritization of chemicals and all these things. I’ve had to do that for myself in order for me to do my work and to live my life. But I don’t see that that’s been done on a a large scale.

Liz Harriman: Well, I think Canada did it a bit. The issue is whether you would agree with their criteria.

DEBRA: Right! That’s it.

Liz Harriman: Each one of these programs have certain criteria. Either they’re looking at children’s products or they’re more concerned with things that are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic in the environment or whatever.

So, you can go through that list in a lot of different ways and come up with different answers.

DEBRA: Yeah.

Liz Harriman: One of the other things on our website, if you go to the Library tab, and then look at Subject Guide, we do have a site which would be good for you probably, Debra, but might overwhelm some of your listeners on environmental health and safety data resources.

And so if you’re looking for more information on a chemical, then that subject guide has a lot of great links and references on it.

DEBRA: Yeah, I also see on the library, you have a link called TURI Chemical Fact Sheets. I was starting to look at that. In fact, I’m going to click on one right now. These are pretty simple explanations for people who want to know just something simple about these chemicals. Here’s one on formaldehyde. Yeah, these are pretty simple.

I just really think that everybody needs to have this kind of information, so that we can make decisions. I mean, I know a lot of consumers, they’re asking me, “Is this chemical toxic? Is this chemical toxic?” And there are not really places that are well-publicized and easy for consumers to understand and things like that. So I think I need to do more work to provide that. It’s such a big job!

Liz Harriman: There’s also an effort by a group which developed something called SixClasses.org. There’s a series of short, 15-minute webinars that were done on six different classes of chemicals for which we have concern. And those are very accessible. They were designed by retailers and others.

DEBRA: I actually went to all of those original webinars. And they are very good summaries that anybody could understand. I really advise people—it’s SixClasses.org, right?

Liz Harriman: Yeah.

DEBRA: You can just go there and see these six classes of chemicals. If concerned about triclosan, you can look at the anti-microbials; and fire retardants, there’s a whole one fire retardants. They just did a really good job putting those together.

It’s time for the next break. We’ll go to break now. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

And my guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute. And that’s at TURI.org. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Liz Harriman, deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute.

And Liz, tell us about your Cleaning Laboratory, what you do there.

Liz Harriman: Our Cleaning Laboratory tests safer cleaners for industry as well as for janitorial cleaning. So, we started out back in the early ‘90s when it was necessary for industries to replace CFP, an ozone-depleting chemical. That’s when we started looking for safer alternatives. And that’s primarily different methods of cleaning with water and detergent and using other mechanical methods to help accomplish that. So that’s all about industry parts cleaning.

It turns out that industry still needs help with that. There are billions of toxic solvents for a lot of cleaning. And so, we’re still at that trying to help companies.

And then, we also do testing on janitorial products. A lot of janitorial products will contain toxic chemicals. Some of the surfactants or the anti-microbial, et cetera, can be bad for you. It can be asthmagens or sensitizers for the folks who use them. And so we’ve been testing safer janitorial equipments and cleaners for quite a while. So, we test the efficacy of the safer cleaners.

DEBRA: And these are particularly cleaners that are used in businesses and industries.

Is there an organization for consumers that does what you do for business, but does it with consumer products?

Liz Harriman: I’m not sure. But we do it in some ways for consumers as well. We don’t have the website up yet, but we do have one that’s in the process which will look at what we call D.I.Y. cleaning products, do-it-yourself.

There are a lot of sites that give those recipes. But we have actually gone through the process of testing them and to see which ones were…

DEBRA: How great! That’s really needed, yeah.

Liz Harriman: Yeah. But if you go to our community website, under the ‘Our Work’, if you go to ‘Home & Community’, there’s a video there demonstrating for a headstart programs how to mix some of your own cleaner and to use those. And there’s also quite a bit of information from previous community projects on more home janitorial cleaning. So, those would be helpful to your listeners as well.

DEBRA: Yeah. I see over in the ‘Home & Community’ page over on the right-hand column, there are some do-it-yourself cleaning recipes. I’m going to just click on one. Here’s floor cleaners, and it gives you some ingredients and if it’s tested or not tested. And I can see that you’re going through this very systematically to come up with answers.

I’m looking at all this, and I’m thinking about how long you’ve been doing this and how long I’ve been doing this, and there’s so much work to do in order to make this transition from finding out what are the toxic chemicals to coming up with the solutions to educating people that they can do something else. It’s just a big job! It’s a big job.

But it needs to be done. It needs to be done. Wow! I just I admire all these things you’re doing.

Liz Harriman: Thank you. I was going to mention one that kind of crosses over the business and community line.

And that’s dry cleaning. So dry cleaning is traditionally done with perchlorethylene which is a carcinogen. And it’s still largely done with perchlorethylene. But it is possible to just use water and detergent and special equipment, and to not ever have to use toxic solvents.

So, we have been working very hard to help companies in Massachusetts, our dry cleaners, to switch to professional wet cleaning. We have eight that we have helped to fund. There’s a handful more that have done it on their own. And I encourage everyone to ask their dry cleaner what solvent they use, and then also to ask if they’ve considered doing everything in wet cleaning. A lot of dry cleaners will do many things in water. But if they don’t have the right equipment, it’s difficult to do dry clean-only fabric. But it is possible. It’s being done in California and Massachusetts. And there’s a handful of other places across the country. That’s a very important transition.

DEBRA: I think so too. I haven’t been on a dry cleaning establishment in at least 20 years. But I’ve been following what’s been going on with this transition and the things that are available. And the other day, I had a stain on my shirt that I couldn’t get out, and I didn’t want to throw it away. I went into my closest dry cleaner here in Florida, in Clearwater, Florida, and they were doing all these things. And they explained to me how green and non-toxic they were, and that they were doing wet cleaning and all these.

And I had no idea! They didn’t have a sign out in front that says, “You know, we’re a non-toxic cleaner. Come in!”

Liz Harriman: That’s true.

DEBRA: So, I recommend to people that they check around in their community and find out who is doing the best dry cleaning if dry cleaning is something you need.

I actually went through a whole wardrobe transition. I now only have clothing that does not need dry cleaning. And that was a conscious decision that I made. Everything I wear is in the washing machine.

Liz Harriman: which is another great transition.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So, there are all kinds of ways to reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals.

Liz Harriman: One of the other things I wanted to mention about that dry cleaning in particular is that one of the things that we worked very hard with business on is not making regrettable substitution.

So traditionally, someone would say, “Well, perchlorethylene is bad. You need to get rid of it,” and companies would then go to their vendors or just try to find another substitute, but not necessarily understand the hazards of the newer particular chemical that was on the market.

They would make a transition to the next chemical. And then, in a few years, you find out that that one’s also bad.

So, we do what’s called Alternative Assessment. We try to look carefully at the alternatives. Rather than just telling someone, “Don’t use this,” we try to say, “Oh, this one’s not good. These are your alternatives” and this is how they kind of stack up in terms of performance and cost and environmental health and safety attributes.

So, for example, there’s one of those on dry cleaning on our website. There’s a 4-page, short fact sheet. If you go to your dry cleaner, and they say that they’re using a particular alternative, BF2000 (which is a hydrocarbon or the GreenEarth), then you can go to that fact sheet that we’ve put out and try to see where some of the environmental health and safety concerns are.

DEBRA: This is so valuable because that the hardest part of that I think is not that consumers or organization or businesses don’t want to change; it’s understanding what to do, and then having to actually make the change.

There’s no point in everybody having to do the same research over and over and over, which is why I think what you’re doing is so valuable because not only is it helping in Massachusetts, but anybody and any state can go to your website and find out the information and do the same thing in terms of making those switches in their business. They could change their dry cleaning business by going to your website and finding out how to do it.

It’s not a matter of just walking around in the dark and not knowing what to do because people like you are doing that groundwork and putting it together in a way that’s understandable.

Wow! Wow. It’s just very, very good, what you’re doing. I know I’m saying that over and over, but I’m just so pleased and impressed that a state has put together this program, and that you’re doing this.

Liz Harriman: Another state, California, has been doing some interesting things. They’re trying to actually mandate alternatives assessments for certain consumer products because they have the Safer Consumer Products Law. I don’t know if you’ve had someone on your show to talk about that yet.

DEBRA: Not yet.

Liz Harriman: But they came out with their first draft list of three chemicals in certain uses that they will make companies do an alternatives assessment on and say, “Is there a safer alternative that you could use for that product?”

So, they’re methylene chloride (which has traditionally been found in paint strippers) and chlorinated tris (which is a flame retardant) and diisocyanate (which are what you make polyurethane out of). They’re particularly concerned with the diisocyanate in spray polyurethane foam where there had been lots and lots of problems with worker health and safety and homeowners having residual chemical effects from the spray polyurethane foam.

So, that should be really very interesting to see.

DEBRA: Yeah, to see what they come up with. I know that methylene chloride, there’s a lot of non-toxic ways to strip paint. That’s something that should be easy to replace. I mean, it might not be a chemical. It might be something else. You can use heat. Just heat up the paint and scrape it off. So that’s not a replacement chemical, but it’s a replacement method. And so, it might not help a business to replace, to be able to sell the same product in a less toxic form. But it helps the consumer have another way of doing it.

Liz Harriman: Right! And one of the particular problems with methylene chloride is in bath tub stripping. So, when someone gets their bath tub refinished, because methylene chloride is very volatile, it evaporates easily, but it heavier than air, it settles on the bottom of the tub. There had been many worker death from when you stick your head down in the tub and you’re overcome.

DEBRA: Wow! Wow. That’s so interesting.

Liz Harriman: Don’t do your own bath tub stripping.

DEBRA: No, no. I’ll just say—we’re coming to the end of the show. Oh, actually, I can’t say this because we only have 10 seconds left.

So, thank you so much for being with me.

Liz Harriman: You’re welcome.

DEBRA: This has been interesting. And the website is TURI.org. Go there and find out some information.

This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And as I’ve said at the beginning of the show, go there and write me a note. This is Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be back tomorrow. Bye!