Enacted in 2017, the California Cleaning Product Right to Know Act requires extensive ingredient disclosures online by January 1, 2020 and disclosures on product labels by January 1, 2021. Section 108952(e) allows a limited exclusion for trade secrets.
This law applies to anyone (manufacturer or supplier) selling finished products that are air care products, automotive cleaning products (cleaner, wax, polish), general cleaning products, or a polish or floor maintenance products used primarily for janitorial, domestic, or institutional cleaning. Exclusions apply for food, drugs, cosmetics, products used exclusively for manufacturing, water-treatment chemicals, industrial laundry products, food and beverage processing and packaging, and trial samples.
So, given that we are just days into the new compliance period, the $2,500 per-product penalty, and determining noncompliance by any potential enforcer of the law is only a Google search away, it’s a good idea to scour and check all your selling websites to ensure that the required disclosures are present and accessible to consumers as required by the law.
For the webpage, a company must disclose the following information:
- Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) number (or “withheld” if there is a confidential business information claim), ingredient name, and functional purpose (fragrance or colorant) of intentionally added ingredients that appear on the 22 “designated lists” (Section 108952(g)(1)–(22)).
- Fragrances included on Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation No. 1223/2009 as required to be labeled by the EU Detergents Regulation No. 648/2004, or subsequent updates to those regulations, when present in the product at a concentration at or above 0.01% (100 ppm).
- Nonfunctional ingredients (34 specific chemicals listed in Section 108952(m)) must be disclosed at or above 0.01% (100 ppm), with the exception of 1,4-dioxane, which must be disclosed at or above 0.001% (10 ppm).
- Electronic links for designated lists grouped together in a single location.
- An electronic link to the product’s safety data sheet (SDS).
The ingredients appearing in the product must be listed in descending order of weight in the product, but ingredients at a weight below 1% may follow in any order.
For the product label, a company must disclose the following information:
- Intentionally added ingredients that appear on the 22 “designated lists” (Section 108952(g)(1)–(22)).
- List of fragrance allergens (above 100 ppm) that appear on Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation No. 1223/2009. If any fragrance allergens appear in the product, the phrase “Contains fragrance allergen(s)” must appear on the label.
- Toll-free phone number of the manufacturer (or supplier).
- An address for an Internet website that provides all the information required by Section 108954.5.