Dow has volunteered to provide complete health and environmental screening information sets on its chemicals produced or imported annually into the United States in quantities greater than 1 million pounds.
Separate studies by the advocacy group Environmental Defense (ED), the US EPA, and the chemical industry confirmed that basic health and safety information was not publicly available for many of the approximately 2,800 industrial chemicals used in the United States in quantities over 1 million pounds. The HPV Challenge was created in 1998 to fill gaps in our knowledge and to put the information in the public domain.
Through an innovative cooperative program, Dow, the American Chemistry Council, and other members of the chemical industry agreed to conduct testing to fill gaps in the 17 data elements of the Screening Information Data Set (SIDS) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This OECD SIDS base set represents an international consensus about the minimum set of information for health and environmental screening, including:
- physical/chemical properties
- ecological toxicity
- environmental fate
- mammalian toxicity endpoints
The HPV Challenge program has been a tremendous success. More than 300 companies have made commitments to nearly 2,200 chemicals, and the vast majority of those commitments are on schedule. The program already has produced more information on more chemicals in less time than any regulatory program. The results are being summarized and made publicly available.1
Dow is on track to meet our commitments to this program.
For additional information: EPA High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Program.
