A meeting of the Scientific Guidance Panel (SGP) on 28 July is believed to have voted to change the listing for this class from designated to priority.
The group includes D5, the base chemical for the GreenEarth cleaning process. Asked for his reaction, Timothy Maxwell, president of GreenEarth Cleaning, told LCN that cyclosiloxanes as a class have been in widely used for personal care products for over 50 years. Such products are in daily use and tons of the products go down the drain and into municipal wastewater systems, so it is understandable that California would want to ensure there are no negative effects on public health. His company supports this general aim.
However, in drycleaning, D5 is used in closed-loop equipment and is not discharged into municipal wastewater systems. Both the state of California and Canada have concluded that on current evidence, D5 does not pose a public health threat.
At the time of writing, Maxwell was still waiting for a report on the SGP meeting, but did not expect any negative feedback on D5. Should D5 specifically be proposed for a biomonitoring programme, he would support this provided that it monitored staff in the drycleaning workplace so that the effects, if any, of this specific application could be properly measured.
