ACI Comments on NY Cleaning Product Ingredient Disclosure

The American Cleaning Institute (ACI)  released the following statement in response to a final policy announced by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation requiring online disclosure of chemicals in household cleaning products: 

“The American Cleaning Institute is disappointed by the Department’s insinuation that consumers need ‘protected’ from ingredients in household cleaning products. The fact is that millions of people safely and effectively use cleaning products every day in homes, offices, healthcare facilities and many other commercial settings.
 
“This action by DEC is unnecessary and burdensome to manufacturers who will be forced, by July 1, 2019, to create new websites in order to sell their products to the citizens of New York.
 
“Consumers should understand that cleaning product manufacturers already provide detailed information online about the ingredients in the products they use safety and effectively every day. This information is provided on brand and/or manufacturer websites.
 
“There is more information available online than ever before about ingredients contained in consumer cleaning products.
 
“American Cleaning Institute members participate in the Consumer Product Ingredient Communication Initiative (http://www.cleaninginstitute.org/ingredient_central/), a comprehensive voluntary program in effect since January 2010. 
 
“The flexibility of the program facilitates strong marketplace ingredient communication by manufacturers with the customer base they serve. Participating consumer cleaning product manufacturers list all ingredients except incidental ingredients that have no technical or functional effect in the product. These labeling options provide for a wide variety of product sizes, information content, and means of information distribution.
 
“Additionally, safety data on hundreds of chemicals in the U.S. consumer cleaning product supply chain have been collected and are now available through the website for ACI’s Cleaning Product Ingredient Safety Initiative (CPISI).
 
“More than five years of work on the Initiative has been finalized, providing reams of publicly available data on ingredients in cleaning products; this data accounts for the scientific backbone to cleaning product ingredient safety.
 
“The CPISI website represents a significant transparency initiative for the cleaning products industry, and provides a striking counterweight to the urban myths that there are no data available on common cleaning product ingredients.”