The Green Screen List of Hazards

The Green Screen evaluates a chemical— along with its known and predicted breakdown products—based upon its hazards. Including the known and predicted breakdown products of a chemical into the Green Screen is important it addresses the potential impacts of a chemical once released into the environment. A precedent for including breakdown products into a chemical assess- 

THE GREEN SCREEN FOR SAFER CHEMICALS EVALUATING FLAME RETARDANTS FOR TV ENCLOSURES 13 

In the Green Screen the hazards of a chemical are defined by its potential to cause acute or chronic adverse effects in humans or wildlife, its fate in the environment, and certain physi-cal/chemical properties of concern to human health. Acute mammalian toxicity (lethality) and irritation of the skin or eye are examples of acute adverse effects that can result from inhalation, ingestion, or dermal contact with a chemical. Chronic effects occur after repeated exposures and include cancer and adverse effects to the reproductive, neurological, endocrine, or immune systems. 

The fate of a chemical in the environment— environmental fate —is strongly determined by its rate of degradation (defined as persistence) and its tendency to accumulate in tissues and organs (bioaccumulation). The physical/chemical properties of concern in the Green Screen are flammability and explodability. 

Organic Pollutants (an international treaty signed in 2001 and convened by the United Nations Environment Programme). 

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The Green Screen list of hazards most closely tracks the hazards incorporated into the US ERA Design for Environment (DfE) Program s summary assessment of alternatives to the brominated flame retardant, pentaBDE. Table 2 lists the hazards included in both the US ERA DfE program s summary assessment of pentaBDE alternatives and the Green Screen. For definitions of the hazards in Table 2 see Appendix 1. 

An additional hazard, endocrine disruption, was added to Table 5 because it is on the Green Screen list of hazards. A literature search of triphenyl phosphate, which is the principal analog used to evaluate the other phosphoric chemicals, revealed no data on the endocrine disrupting properties of these chemicals. 

Establish the list of hazards that are critical to evaluating the safety of a chemical in the Green Screen. 

The most notable difference in hazard lists between the Green Screen and government chemical assessments listed in Table 1 is the inclusion of hazards that relate to the... 

TABLE 2 List of Chemical Hazards Presented in the US EPA DfE Program s Chemical Assessment of PentaBDE Alternatives and the Green Screen... 

The Green Screen also references GHS hazard categories for specific human health effects. The GHS does not provide lists of chemicals, but rather develops threshold values for assigning a chemical to a hazard category. ... 

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