News

New York to Restart Ingredient Communication Rulemaking

The New York State (NYS) Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced a public meeting on its renewed efforts to establish ingredient disclosure requirements for commercial and household cleaning products on  February 24, 2020, in Albany, New York.

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’s Next
DEC is hosting a public meeting on February 24 and looking for input on disclosure of nonfunctional ingredients, issues around confidential information, how to disclose when a product’s formulation temporarily changes, and other regulatory concerns.

Date: February 24, 2020
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: NYS DEC, 625 Broadway, Public Assembly Room 129A/B, Albany, New York 12233

Those who wish to attend need to register. DEC encourages attendees to register by close of business February 21, 2020.

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, we continue 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 encourages you to provide input during this NYS regulatory process, including attending the February 24 public meeting. DEC will hold a formal public comment period once the department officially proposes the regulations. 

Please contact the New York State DEC for more information about this meeting and 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.