Target aims for healthier products under veil of secrecy

This is the second article in a series on US retailers' efforts to curb the use of legal, but potentially harmful, chemicals in household products. The first, by Marc Gunther, discussed the idea that retailers are acting as regulators. The third, by me, discusses Walmart's sustainable chemicals policy.

Search for "shaving cream" on Target's website and the first result that comes up is Barbasol Shaving Cream Soothing Aloe. Want sunscreen? A US west coast search turns up Neutrogena Wet Skin Kids Sunscreen. Need to wash your hair? The first result for shampoo is Macadamia Rejuvenating Shampoo.

While shoppers can choose from thousands of personal care products at Target, these high-ranking products – along with many others – contain hazardous ingredients, according to lists that will inform the company's new sustainable products standard. The shaving cream and shampoo both contain propyl parabens, which may disrupt hormones and contribute to breast cancer, while the sunblock contains – among other red-flagged ingredients – oxybenzone, which may trigger a variety of skin conditions when exposed to sunlight.

These ingredients have been identified as chemicals of concern by GoodGuide, a product-safety-testing lab working with Target on its new guidelines, which were announced in October. These ratings don't prove that these products – or thousands of others that received low health scores in GoodGuide's database – are unsafe, but they do illustrate the potentially vast reach of Target's new chemicals-targeting policy. Many well known products, including those mentioned above, could ultimately be affected.

The policy differs dramatically from a sustainable chemistry policy announced by Walmart in September, although each arguably fills a vacuum in US consumer chemicals regulations. While Walmart takes a prescriptive approach that bans a predetermined set of chemicals from product ingredients, Target's Sustainable Products Standard sets up a rating system intended to motivate suppliers to provide healthier, more sustainable products. It hasn't made any public commitments to reduce or eliminate chemicals from its supply chain.

Margie Kelly of Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an organization that advocates for public disclosure of ingredient lists and elimination of harmful chemicals in consumer products, describes Target's approach as carrot-based and Walmart's as more of a stick. Both, she says, will mean tangible changes on store shelves, and more transparency from manufacturers about what's in the products the big-box stores sell.

How Target's system works

Target's policy revolves around a 100-point scoring system to rate the sustainability of personal care, beauty and household cleaning products sold in the company's stores. (Cosmetics will be scored beginning in 2014 with help from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.)

Seventy percent of the score is based on health concerns. Products with ingredients that appear on one of five lists of high-level health concerns score poorly, as do those that don't post ingredient lists on product packaging and websites. The balance of the score comes from animal testing, waste reduction in packaging and water quality concerns.

Instead of developing its own list of hazardous materials from scratch – or choosing one of the many different approaches that non-governmental organizations and retailers have developed – Target compiled lists of chemicals with high-level health concerns from a patchwork of existing regulations.

Among these are chemicals identified as cancer-causing or toxic to development and reproductive health by the state of California, designated as "chemicals of concern" or potentially risky endocrine disrupters by the European Union, identified as bioaccumulative toxic chemicals by the US Environmental Protection Agency and listed as "chemicals of high concern to children" by Washington state. The company also sought input from NGOs, the EPA, industry experts and many suppliers to develop its rankings.

The policy was developed partly as a response to public concerns about the safety of popular household and personal-care products, said Kate Heiny, Target's senior group manager of sustainability. "Target has heard from our guests that they care about the ingredients in products they put in, on and around their bodies," she said. "We hope that the product standard will help us establish a common language, definition and process for qualifying more sustainable products."

Target also aims to spur healthier and more sustainable products. "Currently, there is no widely accepted standard that can be used to define a more sustainable product," Heiny said. "Beyond compliance and bans, we saw an opportunity for product innovation by driving the marketplace to find better alternatives."

Vendors will supply ingredient lists to GoodGuide's team of chemists, toxicologists and life-cycle analysis experts who will then cross check the ingredients against a list of 1,633 unique chemicals on GoodGuide's "red list" for human health impacts, and 1,589 related to water quality. The ratings focus on major human health impacts such as cancer, reproductive health and endocrine disruption.

Next steps

GoodGuide, a subsidiary of safety science company UL, has its own app and website that rates thousands of consumer products for their safety, environmental impacts and other facts. Target's system is very different, said GoodGuide founder Dara O'Rourke. But it does draw on GoodGuide's database of product ingredients.

Although Target has clearly outlined its scoring system and the sources it's using to assess products, the company hasn't committed to any specific dates when consumers can expect to see changes on store shelves. Target also doesn't plan to share scores publicly, but will use them to pressure vendors to develop better products.

That's a point of contention with some activists. Kelly said the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will continue to push the company and its suppliers to be totally transparent about how products rank. "We want the rankings known and we want to be able to make decisions based on the rankings," she said.

Beyond company policies by Target and Walmart, broader industry standards are needed, O'Rourke said.

"What we need is a comprehensive sets of rules that sends a signal to all retailers, all brands across the US," he said. "Right now what we're looking at is a system where there's dysfunction in the federal regulatory environment where there's little potential for the government to even do its job."