Industry Adjusts to Environmental Concerns

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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

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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

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Surfactants Biodegradability

• 1940s
• Synthetic detergents developed
• Surfactant / Builder system
• Surfactants - primarily branched alkylbenzene
  sulfonates

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Surfactants Biodegradability
1956
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Industry Response

• Early 1960s
• Public reaction and legislative/regulatory
  pressures
• Biodegradable linear alkylbenzene sulfonates
  (LAS) brought into marketplace

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New Tools Developed

• Test methods developed to predict fate in
  wastewater treatment
• Removal
• Ultimate Biodegradability
• Modelling of removal
• Support pre-market investigations

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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

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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

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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
• 1000s of substances

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Late 1990s Voluntary Initiatives

• High Production Volume Chemicals Programs
• SDA manages 9 chemical families
• Extended commitment
• Disclosure of exposure information
• Screening level risk assessments

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Sediments

• Surfactants attach to solids
• Higher concentrations in sediment than in water
  column
• EPA sediment quality criteria
• 1980s
• Multi-phase approach
• Modeling ? Laboratory ? Field

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On-site Wastewater Treatment Systems

• 1960s Limited work on on-site wastewater
  treatment systems
• 1980s
• 25 of U.S. population
• Compatibility
• Treatability

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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

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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

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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

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Information Flow

• Internet ingredient information
• NGOs
• Business
• Consumer-oriented databases
• National Library of Medicine
• Green Peace database

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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

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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

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Collaboration

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

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Extended Producer Responsibility

• Industry will increasingly be asked/mandated to
  foot the bill for managing all stages of a
  products life cycle (e.g., waste disposal)

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Expansion of Chemical Management Systems

• Canadian Environmental Protection Act
• Categorization of Domestic Substances List
  23,000 substances
• European Unions REACH
• Development of Registration, Evaluation and
  Authorization of Chemicals systems
• 65,000 chemicals in commerce

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Modeling

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

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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

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Future

• Nanotechnology
• Modifications to wastewater treatment processes
  to remove residual chemicals

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Summary

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