This market transformation is necessary because the chemicals market has historically undervalued human and environmental health in favor of the more traditional attributes of price, performance and aesthetics. Regulatory bodies often lack the ability to require chemical manufacturers to regularly produce and disclose data on the toxicological impacts of chemicals, resulting in a growing data gap. As a result, consumer-facing manufacturers face significant barriers to learning the toxicological impacts of their products from their supply chain.
Complex, often global product supply chains, competition, and concerns about intellectual property further cloud an already opaque flow of chemical information. These barriers mean that we lack (a) basic information about chemicals already in commerce, (b) the power to mandate disclosure of chemical and hazard data, and therefore © the knowledge to accurately prioritize where to take action, which hinders the ability for us to incentivize the creation of better chemical and material alternatives.
In addition to this, regulation of chemicals often places too heavy a burden on environmental authorities to prove causation between chemicals and health/toxicity issues. Proving this causation definitively is difficult as well as time-consuming, which often results in inaction and significant time lapse between problems of use and exposure, and regulation.2 In the intervening time period, chemicals with strongly suspected and known impact to human and environmental health are released into their environment and can be persistent and continue to cause harm well into the future when the hazard becomes better known.
In order to prevent this dangerous delay in action, ILFI and its programs adhere to the Precautionary Principle. By asking manufacturers to voluntarily adopt a Restricted Substances List, such as the Red List, ILFI advocates that its users avoid use of any chemicals believed to be problematic. The Precautionary approach states that “when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” The pre-cautionary approach is now widely accepted and has even been adopted into law in some regions of the world such as the Restriction on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances Law in the European Union.
