Menu

California’s Green Chemistry Initiative at Age 10: An Evaluation of Its Progress and Promise

  • Gina Solomon, MD, MPH
  • Peggy Reynolds, Ph.D., University of California San Francisco; Anh Hoang, University of California San Francisco
An image for California’s Green Chemistry Initiative at Age 10: An Evaluation of Its Progress and Promise

In 2008, the California legislature enacted two groundbreaking laws collectively designed to protect Californians from toxic chemicals in products, and to provide the public with more information about chemical hazards:

  • Assembly Bill 1879 (Feuer, 2008) created the Safer Consumer Products Program, requiring the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to evaluate chemicals of concern in products and their potential alternatives and to reduce the hazards of chemicals in products.
  • Senate Bill 509 (Simitian, 2008) established a Toxics Information Clearinghouse for data on chemical Hazard Traits, as defined by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).

A decade later, this project evaluated the progress made under these two laws, which collectively enacted the California Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI). The project also considered how the GCI addresses breast carcinogens. This report provides recommendations for improving the program and ensuring the state initiative fulfills its promise to make consumer products safer and people healthier.

Full Report

Fact sheet

Supplementary materials

 

Download


Work With Us

You change the world. We do the rest. Explore fiscal sponsorship at PHI.

Bring Your Work to PHI

Support Us

Together, we can accelerate our response to public health’s most critical issues.

Donate

Find Employment

Begin your career at the Public Health Institute.

See Jobs

Kids in a school playground

Close

Donate to PHI Today to Build a Healthier World for Tomorrow

The last few years have been immensely challenging for communities around the globe—in some cases, setting back public health gains by years or decades. But these last few years have also demonstrated what works: Sustained investments in communities, health and equity, and policy change to support them. Now is the time to strengthen these successes, to ensure that no community falls behind.

Donate to PHI

Continue to PHI.org