Today, The Home Depot announced a new Chemical Strategy to remove harmful chemicals in building products such as paints, carpet, and flooring. The policy addresses dangerous chemicals like flame retardants, phthalates, and nonylphenol ethoxylates. Hazardous chemicals such as these have been linked to cancer, reproductive harm, asthma, and learning and developmental disabilities.
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Mind the Store Campaign Director Mike Schade issued the following statement in response:
“We congratulate The Home Depot for developing this important new Chemical Strategy to drive harmful chemicals out of products like paint, wall-to-wall carpet, and flooring. This is great news and builds on Home Depot’s successful policy to eliminate phthalates in flooring. We are pleased to see that The Home Depot is eliminating a more significant use of harmful chemicals such as nonylphenol ethoxylates and other alkylphenol ethoxylates in paint. While we’re pleased that The Home Depot is investigating alternatives to methylene chloride-based paint strippers, they should take the next step and commit to a full phase-out of toxic chemicals in paint strippers. These chemicals pose unacceptable risks to their customers.
We urge Lowe’s and Ace Hardware to join The Home Depot in developing safer chemical policies to restrict a broader universe of chemicals in building products.”
Last November, the Mind the Store campaign released a report card evaluating The Home Depot and other retailers’ safer chemicals programs. The Home Depot is the latest retailer to announce progress in restricting harmful chemicals. Since January, Best Buy, Costco, CVS, Target, and Walmart have all announced new initiatives to address harmful chemicals in products.
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