What is The Green Screen for
Safer Chemicals?

Diseases of our modern age are increasingly linked to toxic chemicals in the environment. We are routinely exposed to known carcinogens in our food, air and water and children, adults and wildlife are carrying hundreds of synthetic hazardous chemicals in their bodies known to cause reproductive harm, suppress the immune system and cause cancer. The Green Screen for Safer Chemicals is a chemical screening method to help move our society quickly and effectively toward the use of greener and safer chemicals. The Green Screen is the first open source tool to identify substances that are inherently less hazardous for humans and the environment.

At the foundation of the Green Screen method are the Principles of Green Chemistry and the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Design for Environment (DfE) program. The Green Screen addresses many of the principles of green chemistry through its focus on hazard reduction. A basic premise behind green chemistry and the Green Screen is that chemical risk is most effectively managed by reducing hazard, rather than controlling exposure. This means it is safer to choose inherently less hazardous chemicals rather than attempt to control the exposure risk of a hazardous chemical which is the traditional thinking behind risk management. Yet, exposure controls can and do fail, and products are used in ways that were never intended. Therefore the most effective means to reduce risk is to reduce hazard by using inherently safer chemicals.

The Green Screen does this by defining four benchmarks with each benchmark defining a progressively safer chemical:

Who uses the Green Screen?

The Green Screen is used to guide decision making toward the use of the least hazardous options via a process of informed substitution. It can be used by companies to assess the inherent hazards of the chemicals they use and then determine if possible substitutes are indeed safer replacements. It can be used by governments to determine if safer substitutes exist on the market to support the necessary legislative phase out of chemicals of high concern. The more generic Green Screen approach of ‘bringing up the bottom’ by first screening chemicals against the Red List of Chemicals can be used by retailers to encourage suppliers to use safer chemicals. HP, Wal-Mart and the State of Washington in the USA have used the Green Screen in these various ways.

The Green Screen approach first ‘brings up the bottom’ by screening chemicals against the Red List of Chemicals of High Concern.

• How companies, retailers and governments use the Green Screen

Companies, retailers and governments are using the Green Screen.

HP is using the Green Screen to assess alternatives to brominated flame retardants and PVC plastics. As the company states:

One promising comparative assessment tool available for public use and dissemination is the Green Screen for Safer Chemicals, developed by Clean Production Action. This method has been used to compare flame retardants for TV enclosures and is being adapted for use in the US EPA’s DfE partnership on flame retardants in printed circuit boards. The tool is still being refined, but this approach may be able to serve as the prototype for an industry standard approach for assessing the relative human health and environmental impacts of new materials and provide information to support the ongoing preferential selection of less hazardous materials.

Click here to download (.pdf file) : Brominated Flame Retardant (BFR) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Free Material Evaluation Requirements. Helen Holder and Michael Roesch. Global Engineering Services. Hewlett-Packard Company

The state of Washington, USA used the Green Screen as an alternatives assessment tool to determine if safer alternatives to Deca-BDE, a flame retardants used in television casings and upholstery, existed on the market. A state-wide ban on products containing this class of chemicals will take effect January 2011. For more information click here to download (.pdf file) Alternatives to Deca-BDE in Televisions and Computers and Residential Upholstered Furniture: Identifying safer and technically feasible alternatives to the flame retardant called Deca-BDE used in the electronic enclosures of televisions and computers and in residential upholstered furniture. Washington Department of Ecology and Department of Health. Final Report December 29, 2008 (.pdf file)

Wal-Mart’s Chemical Intensive Products workgroup has developed a chemical screen based on the Green Screen approach. In October 2007 Clean Production Action gave a Green Screen presentation to Wal-Mart executives to show the benefits of doing a group approach to chemicals of high concern rather than a chemical by chemical approach. In April 2009 Wal-Mart announced a new chemicals screening tool that would help Wal-mart partner with Suppliers to drive green chemistry innovation, by identifying “chemicals with potential environmental impact to Buyers and Suppliers. “

Starting May 14, 2009 Wal-Mart will introduce a Chemical Screening Tool to Walmart Buyers and Walmart Suppliers, called “GreenWERCS”. The information the tool provides is based on pre-identified scoring and weighting of chemical product characteristics with the initial focus on:

PBT’s (Persistent and Bioaccumulative Toxic Substances)
CMR’s (Carcinogenicity; Mutagenicity; Reproductive Toxicity)
Hazardous waste implications of chemical based products.

Suppliers will have their chemicals scored against the screening tool and the portal will accommodate the transmission of summary data results to other participating retailers in the program. Wal-Mart’s stated goal is to encourage constant improvement in the supply chain.

• How the benchmarks were designed

Each benchmark includes a set of criteria that a chemical, along with its known and predicted breakdown products and metabolites, must pass. To progress from Benchmark 1 to Benchmark 2, a chemical (and its breakdown products and metabolites) must pass all the criteria specified under Benchmark 1.



For example, a chemical (along with its breakdown products and metabolites) that is persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic would not pass beyond Benchmark 1. Similarly, to progress from Benchmark 2 to Benchmark 3 and from Benchmark 3 to Benchmark 4, the chemical (along with its breakdown products and metabolites) must pass all criteria specified under each respective benchmark. The criteria become increasingly more demanding for environmental and human health and safety for each benchmark, with the hazard criteria of Benchmark 4 representing the safest chemical.

The Green Screen list of hazard endpoints tracks the hazards government agencies are incorporating into their chemical assessments, including the: US EPA, Environment Canada, International Joint Commission (a commission established by the US and Canada to protect transboundary waters), the European Union’s recently enacted chemicals policy legislation (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals– REACH), and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (an international treaty signed in 2001 and convened by the United Nations Environment Programme).

• Assessing chemicals of high concern by using the Red List of Chemicals

Red list chemicals are a select group chemicals that are the highest priority to eliminate from usage. Clean Production Action and Healthy Building Network developed the Red List which is a compilation of lists established by one or more government entities and which identify chemicals that are:

• Persistent bioaccumulative toxicant (PBT)
• Very persistent, very bioaccumulative (vPvB)
• Be known or likely to lead to any of the following endpoints:
• Cancer
• Mutagenicity
• Reproductive or Developmental Toxicity
• Neurotoxicity
• Endocrine disruption

However it is important to note that the authoritative lists are based on evaluation of only a limited set of the approximately 80,000 chemicals in commerce. Many chemicals have simply not been tested. Therefore it is important to assess the available toxicological literature on chemicals which are not listed. In this respect the Red List is a starting point for identifying chemicals of high concern.

• How to use the Green Screen

Companies can initially assess if they have a chemical of high concern within Benchmark 1 by doing a quick check against the Red List of Chemicals. A company that screens their formulation against the Red List of Chemicals can start to identify which of their chemicals is a priority for substitution. However it is important to note that the authoritative lists are based on evaluation of only a limited set of the approximately 80,000 chemicals in commerce. Many chemicals have simply not been tested. Therefore it is important to assess the available toxicological literature on chemicals which are not listed and to use modeling tools and analogs to determine whether the weight of evidence indicates that a chemical is a chemical of high concern.

If a chemical is found to be on the Red List, the company would then search for a substitute chemical or formulation which would fall into Benchmark 2 or preferably, higher. The lack of data on chemicals necessitates the use of analogues, modeling, and literature searches. The first application of the Green Screen to assess Deca-BDE and alternatives on the market benefited from the comprehensive data provided by the US EPA’s Design for Environment project on brominated flame retardants. More information on how to use analogues and modeling is available in the full Green Screen report. Clean Production Action is currently in the process of establishing an open source wiki site to share expertise in the use of the Green Screen. Stay tuned for updates.

• Case Study: Using the Green Screen to assess flame retardant chemicals used in Televisions
• Download the Green Screen report and case study on Deca-BDE
• Download the Green Screen white paper
• A strategy for safer chemicals use in products

The Green Screen charts progress towards the production and use of safer chemicals. It is a tool to advance the larger framework of effective chemicals policy. The Chemical Policy Principles developed by the Business NGO Working Group for Safer Chemicals and Sustainable Materials (defines this policy roadmap with four guiding principles for responsible companies and their supply chains:


1. Know and disclose product chemistry;
2. Assess and avoid hazards;
3. Commit to continuous improvement;
4. Support public policies and industry standards that: advance the implementation of the above three principles

Companies and chemical producers who commit to continuous improvement first avoid the generation and use of high hazardous chemicals and then practice informed substitution towards safer chemicals use. The Green Screen for Safer Chemicals supports this iterative process as an important tool within the toolbox of strategies that advance the adoption of green chemistry principles.