Chemicals and chemical products provide many benefits to society, and they must be managed in a responsible way to minimize adverse effects on humans and the environment. DuPont is committed to ensuring that public health and the environment are protected from unreasonable risk resulting from exposure to chemicals and applies appropriate risk management measures to achieve this objective. DuPont manufactures, stores, transports, uses, disposes of, and recycles its products in a manner that protects human health and the environment.
DuPont aims to meet its responsibilities under its company’s safety, health, and environment (SHE) commitment (The DuPont Commitment), the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care® initiative (www.responsiblecare.org) and the International Council of Chemical Association’s (ICCA) voluntary initiative called the Global Product Strategy (GPS) (http://www.icca-chem.org/). The goal of the GPS is to ensure that society will continue to enjoy the value and benefits of chemistry, while industry and its partners continuously improve efforts to protect public safety, health, and the environment.
DuPont joined the GPS initiative when it was launched in 2006. The goal of the initiative is to improve product stewardship within the chemical industry and with suppliers and customers throughout the chain of commerce. As a member of the initiative, DuPont is assessing further the risk of its key chemicals in commerce by 2018. By 2012, DuPont (along with other participating companies) will report on its GPS progress.
To meet this deadline, DuPont has begun performing Product Stewardship Assessments to evaluate further the safety of the current uses of its chemicals.
As the first step in the assessment process, DuPont analyzed its chemical inventory against the following prioritization criteria:
- Business relevance
- Hazard characteristics
- Exposure potential
- Detection in human blood, tissue, or urine
- Potential impacts on selected populations and/or endpoints
- Stakeholder feedback
DuPont is evaluating the high-priority chemicals using a screening level risk assessment approach. This approach uses readily available hazard, use, and exposure information to determine the safety of these chemicals for current uses throughout the chain of commerce.
Product Stewardship Summaries
Product Stewardship Summaries for key DuPont chemicals/products are being made publically available. These summaries will be supplemented and updated as more information becomes available. Initial summaries can be located in the US EPA’s HPVIS database (High Production Volume Information System (HPVIS)) or from other publically available sources such as http://www.epa.gov/EPA-PEST/2005/May/Day-18/p9475.htm
