Industry Adjusts to Environmental Concerns Richard Sedlak The Soap and Detergent Association A Colloquium to Celebrate Fifty Years of Environmental Engineering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute March 29, 2005

SDA/Industry Program  Assess environmental fate and effects  1950s: WWTPs  1970s: Hazard and exposure data sets  1980s: On-site Wastewater Treatment Systems  1980s: Sediments  1990s: Water reuse

Surfactants & Biodegradability  1940s  “Synthetic” detergents developed  Surfactant / “Builder” system  Surfactants - primarily branched alkylbenzene sulfonates

Surfactants & Biodegradability 1956

Industry Response  Early 1960s  Public reaction and legislative/regulatory pressures  Biodegradable “linear” alkylbenzene sulfonates (LAS) brought into marketplace

New Tools Developed  Test methods developed to predict fate in wastewater treatment  Removal  Ultimate Biodegradability  Modelling of removal  Support pre-market investigations

The Change to Looking Ahead  Mid-1970s  Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA)  Created mechanisms for Federal review of substances  Industry concern:  High volume chemicals would be targeted  While under review, public could be concerned with safety

The Change to Looking Ahead  Mid- to Late 1970s: Surfactant Safety Reviews  Comprehensive summaries of public and in-house human and environmental hazard and exposure data  Seven classes of surfactants: LAS, AS, AE, AES, APE, AOS & SAS  Placed in public domain  Gap analysis facilitated  Updated through mid-1990s

Late 1990s: Voluntary Initiatives  High Production Volume Chemicals Programs  Countries handling programs too slow  Major voluntary shift of burden to industry  Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)  U.S. EPA Challenge  Comprehensive compilations of public and in-house physical-chemical and hazard data  1000’s of substances

Late 1990s: Voluntary Initiatives  High Production Volume Chemicals Programs  SDA manages 9 chemical families  Extended commitment:  Disclosure of exposure information  Screening level risk assessments

Sediments  Surfactants attach to solids  Higher concentrations in sediment than in water column  EPA sediment quality criteria  1980s  Multi-phase approach  Modeling  Laboratory  Field

On-site Wastewater Treatment Systems  1960s: Limited work on on-site wastewater treatment systems  1980s  25% of U.S. population  Compatibility  Treatability

Water Reuse  Reuse of greywater and wastewater could put pressure on ingredients  Irrigation - salts  Drinking water - closed loop systems  1990s  Extent of residential greywater reuse  Assess environmental impacts

Monitoring/Biomonitoring  Analytical tools allow very low level detection  Environmental matrices: U.S. Geological Survey  Human fluids and tissues: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  Exposure information issued without risk context

Information Flow  Increasingly larger volumes of hazard and exposure data will be available to the public  Capacity of public to understand will be challenged  Capacity of industry & governments to place in context will be challenged

Information Flow  Internet: ingredient information  NGOs  Business  Consumer-oriented databases  National Library of Medicine  Green Peace database

Risk Communication  Lack of ability to properly communicate risk will:  Damage public confidence in institutions  Belgium contamination of dairy products, BSE in England, pthalates in US  Damage reputation of products/chemicals  Misdirect resources

Collaboration  Suppliers (hazard data) and formulators (information relevant to exposure) need to cooperate  No single company will be able to do an acceptable chemical risk assessment  Disparate industries will have to cooperate to do risk assessments, particularly for the environment

Collaboration  Role for third parties  Bring stakeholders together (industry, chemical users, governments, researchers, etc.)  Pool limited resources

Extended Producer Responsibility  Industry will increasingly be asked/mandated to foot the bill for managing all stages of a product’s life cycle (e.g., waste disposal)

Expansion of Chemical Management Systems  Canadian Environmental Protection Act  Categorization of Domestic Substances List: 23,000 substances  European Union’s REACH  Development of Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals systems  65,000 chemicals in commerce

Modeling  Models needed to fill knowledge gaps  (Quantitative) Structure Activity Relationships  Exposure models  Chronic low level exposures

Non-regulatory Approaches  Increased focus on non-regulatory approaches to chemical management  Industry:  Product stewardship programs  HPV-like chemical programs  Increased focus on products and ingredients to drive upstream changes  NGO campaigns  Increased protection of sensitive populations  e.g., children, elderly, immunocompromised, asthmatic, in-home healthcare

Future  Nanotechnology  Modifications to wastewater treatment processes to remove residual chemicals

Summary  Detergent industry moved from reactive to proactive mode by mid-1970s  Continual stewardship required  Dedication of expert resources