News

New York Holds Meeting on Ingredient Communication Rules

On February 24, the New York State (NYS) Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) hosted a public meeting concerning its renewed efforts to establish ingredient disclosure requirements for commercial and household cleaning products.

Background
NYS is restarting the regulatory process for the purpose of establishing regulations that ultimately will require manufacturers to disclose the ingredients in cleaning products sold in the state. NYS originally issued a final rule on June 6, 2018, requiring ingredient disclosure beginning January 1, 2020. However, the NYS Supreme Court deemed the rule invalid on August 27, 2019, as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Household & Commercial Products Association and the American Cleaning Institute. The court found the rule didn’t follow the requirements of state administrative law. NYS is now starting the regulatory process over in order to establish new ingredient disclosure requirements.

What Was Discussed?
During the meeting the NYS DEC presented the “recommended best management practices for cleaning product information disclosure.” The document outlines the basis for what will likely become the proposed rule.

Additionally, the DEC solicited input on disclosure of nonfunctional ingredients, issues around confidential information, how to disclose when a product’s formulation temporarily changes, and other regulatory concerns from nongovernmental organizations, trade associations, and cleaning product manufacturers.

ISSA members and other trade associations brought up issues related to finding common ground on de minimis levels for nonfunctional contaminants and the difficulty in testing for so many contaminants at such miniscule levels. Other items discussed included flexibility as it relates to design requirements for website disclosure, using a risk-based versus a hazard-based regulatory approach, and determining responsibility for posting ingredients of private label products.

No timeline was given for the DEC to officially propose the regulation.

How You Can Help
ISSA supports consistent disclosure laws that help educate the public while protecting the legitimate interests of businesses. Cleaning is critical to protecting public health and therefore any proposals not relying on sound science do a disservice to the public. Accordingly, the association continues to support consistent disclosure and labeling requirements and oppose patchwork approaches that unduly burden small businesses, don’t protect proprietary business information, and undermine public health by dissuading the use of safe and effective cleaning products.

ISSA will alert members once the department officially proposes the regulations and encourages your feedback and input into the regulatory process. 

Please contact John Nothdurft, ISSA director of government affairs, at [email protected] with any feedback regarding ingredient communications, other regulatory issues, or ISSA advocacy efforts.

Additional Information: As a benefit to our members, ISSA produced a summary of California’s ingredient disclosure law and New York’s original disclosure program.