The National Research Council will evaluate current practices for assessing alternatives for toxic, hazardous, or otherwise undesirable chemicals in processes and in end uses, in order to provide guidance for improving and increasing the use of such assessments by regulatory agencies and industry. It will:

• Review existing approaches to alternatives assessment in use by government and industry. Include an examination of methods being used in other countries, including the European Union’s REACH program and the Canadian CCMP. Discuss objectives for these assessments, how alternatives to be evaluated are identified, and how assessments are applied at various points in a product’s development and life cycle.
• Discuss how existing approaches consider and weigh benefits and shortcomings of alternatives, and how these approaches consider tradeoffs between factors such as product functionality, product efficacy, process safety, energy efficiency of production and use, risk (hazard and potential for human exposure and toxicity), environmental impact and potential environmental impact, and economic feasibility.
• Evaluate the utility and effectiveness of alternatives assessment methodologies in determining risks and benefits, and synergies and tradeoffs associated with proposed chemical alternatives across the cradle-to-grave life cycle, including in production, in their intended use, and in disposal or other end-of-life scenarios such as reclamation or recycling of products.
• Discuss whether and how alternatives assessment can be performed on chemical mixtures both in one product and across multiple product lines in order to:
  • Account more realistically for the complex chemical matrix that both substitutions and exposure occur within, and
  • Enable more efficient and effective alternatives assessment of the tens of thousands of chemicals currently in commerce.
• Discuss whether and how alternatives assessments can be structured to improve the economic feasibility and overall advantages of developing alternative chemicals and chemical processes.
• Discuss whether enhanced approaches to alternatives assessment could be developed and adopted by government and industry to help identify and promote safer or greener alternatives to chemicals in the pre- and post-market phases of products.

Identify data and knowledge gaps that impede the development and use of alternatives assessment, and research needed to fill these gaps.