What Is the Red List and Why Should You Care?
Have you ever considered how many chemicals you encounter on a daily basis? It’s not something most of us typically think about unless there is a strong odor present or a warning label in eyesight. But the fact is, there’s almost no escaping them and they lurk in some unobvious places.
Chemicals are present in the fabrics covering our bodies, in our furniture, food packaging, the materials used to build our homes and manufacture our cars, in our cookware, and the list goes on. If you were to break down a typical sofa, for instance, you might find:
Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances PFAS (also referred to as highly fluorinated chemicals or PFCs)
If the sofa boasts water-repellent or stain-resistant fabric, chances are it contains PFAS.
Flame retardants (organohalogen and organophosphate) chemicals such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and chlorinated tris (TDCPP)
May be present in the fabric as well as the foam
Phthalates –– often added to vinyl to make it soft and pliable (often called PVC)
May be present in the furniture glue used
Solvents including aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzene) and halogenated organic solvents (such as methylene chloride)
These could be present in the furniture glue or any wood finish used
Each of these chemicals affects the human body in different ways ranging from headache and brain fog to hormone disruption and behavioral changes to reproductive issues and even cancer. Still, they remain in wide use. What’s more troubling is many of these chemicals are now turning up in greater quantities in the human body. PFAs, for example, have been detected in the bloodstream of 98% of Americans.
Despite the health concerns, many of these harmful chemicals fly under the radar of regulation. This has prompted organizations like the Green Science Policy Institute to initiate programs like Six Classes, which identifies and aims to reduce the use of six chemical classes they’ve identified as the most detrimental.
The prevalence of chemicals
Conduct an online search about the number of chemicals in use and you’re likely to come across an often-quoted stat ranging from 84,000 to 86,000. The truth is, it’s not quite that high.
As of August 2023, the EPA reported that of the more than 86,000 chemicals on its Toxic Substances Control Act Chemical Substance (TSCA) Inventory, just over 42,000 are actually active. A more palatable figure to be sure, but still a daunting number of chemicals in use, many of which have yet to undergo risk evaluation by the EPA.
Luckily, several organizations have taken on the task of cataloging the specific chemicals that pose a threat to humans and the environment. One such organization is the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). In 2006, the organization introduced the Living Building Challenge (LBC) Red List, a compilation of the “worst-in-class” materials, chemicals and elements prevalent in the building products industry known to pose serious risks to human health and the greater ecosystem.
The initial list, created in tandem with the Healthy Building Network and the Pharos Project, contained just 13 chemicals. Today, it houses approximately 12,000. The goal is that by bringing these into awareness, the building products manufacturing industry will begin to phase these out.
“Nobody should be exposed, in their place of living or place of work, to toxic chemicals or toxic exposures all the time, especially when we don't have any of the toxicological data to show what is safe,” said Mike Johnson director of materials at ILFI. “We're surrounded by so many chemicals each and every day because most of us are going to spend about 90% of our lives indoors. Identifying the worst of the worst offenders that were most common in the buildings was the easiest place to start to really ensure that everybody had access to healthy spaces to live and breathe.
Each year, the list is reviewed and updated based on a number of criteria, and additions may be in the form of individual chemicals or entire chemical classes. The most recent addition included nearly 6,000 PFAS compounds, bringing the total within this class to 10,819.
“More and more data suggests that some of these chemicals we know are bad or we strongly suspect could be bad,” Johnson said. “But one of the most important things to keep in mind is isolated chemicals, we understand, to some degree or perhaps no degree at all. But we don't have a very good understanding of what these chemicals do in combination with one another and what happens when we're exposed constantly. We may be able to handle one chemical at a time or maybe 30 chemicals at a time, but what happens when you're exposed to 200 at a time?”
See the full interview here.
Regrettable substitutions
As more of these potentially harmful chemicals have come into the limelight, some manufacturers have made efforts to reduce or eliminate their use. But in some cases, that has resulted in the use of “regrettable substitutions”.
One such regrettable substitution came with the elimination of BPA (bisphenol A), which is known to mimic or block hormones. Clever marketing began appearing on various food packaging labels touting “BPA-free” leading one to believe it was a safe and healthy choice. However, some manufacturers simply replaced BPA with BPS (bisphenol S) and BPF (bisphenol F), which appear to have similar hormone-disrupting properties.
This is one reason why the Red List takes a precautionary approach, looking at entire chemical classes versus isolated chemicals.
“If you identify BPA as a problem and you work as an industry or as a movement to remove it from products, but you don't know about or eliminate BPS, for example, then you have regrettable substitutions that are in place without the public knowing that may be equally bad or worse,” Johnson said. “Instead, let's look at this as a class of chemicals. We know that some of them have harmful properties. We know these are going to be the quote ‘forever chemicals’, so let's just address them as a class. Let's get rid of them. Especially in the places where they're not absolutely fundamentally critical to be in the product in the first place. Why expose anybody to that?”
The Red List at work
While ILFI and its partners have done a lot of the heavy lifting of identifying, researching and compiling the chemicals on the Red List, given that there are upwards of 12,000 entries, putting it to use on a design project can appear overwhelming. It’s still worth getting familiar with the list, however, ILFI developed another tool for quickly identifying whether a particular product is free of the chemicals deemed worst in class.
Enter the Declare label.
“Declare labels that are determined as Red List-free have been screened and reported by the manufacturer, or third-party verification, that the product contains none of those ingredients down to a threshold of 100 parts per million (ppm), which is a very, very small quantity,” Johnson said.
But, as Johnson points out, any manufacturer with a Declare label, even if it doesn’t check the Red List-free box, is demonstrating a commitment to transparency. And that’s worth paying attention to. Especially since it’s entirely voluntary.
“Even if it does have a Watch List ingredient or a Red List ingredient, the fact that a manufacturer is willing to tell you, that should receive accolades and be honored,” he said. “And that allows us to go back to the manufacturers who have been open and honest with us and say, ‘Why do you have this ingredient in your material?’ Oftentimes, we find that that material has to be in the ingredient for the time being because there is not a substitute that meets performance criteria or is safe or not even worse than the chemical that's currently there. So, we have to have the conversations. We don't want to make snap judgments. That said, if you can choose a product that is Red List-free and meets your performance criteria, choose it because you know it's a safer product from an exposure standpoint.
The key takeaway for designers, architects and consumers is to get inquisitive. Look for Declare labels, ask manufacturers, vendors and suppliers for ingredient lists. Just as you likely wouldn’t eat any packaged food that didn’t have a nutritional label on it, start to think about materials and other products in the same way. It’s the only way we’ll begin to build a safer, healthier environment.
Finally, have conversations and start to ask for healthier alternatives. Manufacturers will go where the demand is. The more regenerative and healthy materials are specified, the more vendors will respond with solutions.