Right to know missing from industry proposal

Labelling would provide ingredients only in 2010

The proposals by the Canadian Consumer Specialty Products Association (CCSPA) to launch an initiative in 2010 to label household product ingredients won’t do anything to provide consumers with right-to-know information on potentially hazardous ingredients in the products they use.

LEAS issued a news release April 2, calling the CCSPA announcement “too little, far too late.”

“Canadians have been asking for not only ingredients, but also potential hazards to be labelled on household products,” said LEAS research coordinator Sean Griffin. “Now that governments at the provincial and federal level have been looking at right-to know labelling legislation, the industry wants to appear as if it’s doing something.

“But it’s not enough and it doesn’t address Canadians’ right to know what potential toxic ingredients may be in household and other consumer products,” he said.

The CCSPA, the industry lobby group for both U.S. and Canadian manufacturers of chemical products, announced April 2 that beginning Jan. 1, 2010, member companies would begin labelling ingredients on five categories of products: air care, automotive and household products, polishes and floor maintenance products.

Under the voluntary industry program, companies will be allowed to use any one of four different ingredient identification systems and will be permitted different ways of providing ingredient information, including the label, a website or a toll-free number.

The initiative will also allow companies to avoid disclosing potentially toxic phthalates that may be in the products, since they will be included under the catch-all term “fragrance.”

But the biggest gap in the initiative is the absence of any hazard labelling that would identify any potentially hazardous ingredients, such as carcinogens or reproductive toxins that may be in the product. Consumers have the right to know what potentially toxic ingredients they may be exposed in the products they use and hazard labelling is necessary to ensure that right is upheld.

Many common household products, including paint strippers and moth repellent products, contain ingredients listed as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. But those would not be identified as hazards under the industry’s initiative.

Still, the industry’s announcement indicates that it is under considerable pressure to provide information to consumers.

Last year, LEAS executive director Mae Burrows represented the public interest in a multi-stakeholder consultation with Health Canada. In May, 2007, several groups, including LEAS, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Canadian Cancer Society, issued a statement outlining their support for hazard labelling. Industry groups participating in the consultation, including the CCSPA, opposed hazard labelling.

“We need government to enact right-to-know legislation that will require manufacturers to identify potentially hazardous ingredients in their products,” said Burrows. “Industry is not going to do it on its own and this latest initiative from CCSPA makes that clear.”

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