Comment submitted by Alexandra Scranton, Director of Science and Research, Women's Voices for the Earth

Women’s Voices for the Earth is a national organization that works to eliminate toxic chemicals that impact women’s health by changing consumer behaviors, corporate practices and government policies. We currently work on campaigns to eliminate toxic chemicals from consumer products such as cleaning products and cosmetics. Thus our interest includes working for the safety of sustainable products, but also the safety of traditional products as well. We appreciate the opportunity to provide stakeholder input to EPA on the issue of sustainable products. 1. What do you see as the major policy and research challenges, opportunities, and trends impacting the development, manufacture, designation, and use of sustainable products? A significant problem for consumers, currently, is the lack of access to basic information about the make-up of consumer products. This is true for both traditional products and sustainable products. Manufacturers should be required to fully disclose ingredients in their products and to provide basic information on any health hazards associated with those ingredients. Consumers certainly expect more from products branded as sustainable, (as they are often paying more for them as well) but often there is the same lack of transparency with these products as well. 2. What do you see as EPA’s overall role in addressing these challenges and opportunities? EPAs role should be to hold industry accountable for demonstrating the chemical safety of their products. Products should not be presumed safe until proven harmful, instead manufacturers should be responsible for demonstrating the safety of the their products. We would also like to see national support for basic and applied research into green chemistry and engineering to promote safer alternatives to chemicals currently posing potential health hazards. Alexandra Scranton Director of Science and Research Women's Voices for the Earth alex@womenandenvironment.org