Companies supporting California’s chemical label law

It took more than a decade, but California has a new law requiring extensive labeling of ingredients in cleaning products, and it got support from what might seem the unlikeliest of advocates: product manufacturers themselves.

Companies like Procter & Gamble and Easy-Off maker Reckitt Benckiser Group, after years of arguing the need to preserve their proprietary formulas in detergents and oven cleaners, came to the table with lawmakers and health and environmental groups and ultimately signed on.

P&G, which makes Mr. Clean and Comet, and other manufacturers have also faced growing pressure from retailers to disclose — and in some cases, remove — ingredients. Merchants are responding to customers’ demands for transparency about chemicals like formaldehyde and phthalates.

“The timing was right,” said Julie Froelicher, P&G’s North American regulatory and technical relations manager. A “growing chorus” of consumers want to know more about what’s in their products, she said.

But pushback is building, too. The Trump administration’s deregulation drive and a raft of disclosure measures in other states has prompted about 50 trade groups to lobby for a national labeling standard that would challenge rules like the new California law. Opponents say such a move would weaken consumer protections. States have long set the pace for regulating consumer safety, with California leading the way.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed California’s Cleaning Product Right to Know Act into law in October. The first phase takes effect in 2020, when manufacturers of detergents, disinfectants and other household products will be required to list online any substances linked to harmful health effects, along with most other ingredients. By January 2021, they will need to do so on product labels as well.

In New York, meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo used his 2017 state of the state report to announce that manufacturers would be required to list cleaning-product chemicals on easily searchable websites. Though New York has had disclosure regulations on its books for four decades, they haven’t been enforced. The state is now working to finalize updated rules.

According to the Environmental Working Group, a co-sponsor of the California legislation, only 7 percent of cleaning products adequately list ingredients. Yet pressure on manufacturers is growing from leading retailers like Target Corp. and Home Depot Inc. Last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. specified eight chemical groups it wants eliminated, including formaldehyde, and this year, expanded the list of substances it’s encouraging suppliers to remove.

“Over the years, I think that a lot of the fundamental attitude of ‘we’re not doing this’ eroded, in part because of what Wal-Mart was doing,” said Deborah Goldberg, a managing attorney at Earthjustice, a group that brings lawsuits to challenge or enforce environmental policy.

Proponents of the California law say there’s plenty to be concerned about in household cleaners, including ingredients that may cause cancer or reproductive harm. One of the sponsors, Women’s Voices for the Earth, cites studies showing that workers who clean for a living have higher rates of asthma and are more likely to have children with birth defects.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, who sponsored the law in the legislature, knows those concerns well. His mother spent years cleaning homes in some of the state’s wealthiest communities. She’d often come home feeling dizzy or sick. As a result, “this issue is very personal on multiple fronts,” Lara said.