An industry and non-governmental organisation collaboration has launched a tool to help formulators of the cleaners used in electronics assembly manufacturing swap out toxic chemicals for safer, more sustainable alternatives.
The chemical cleaners and degreasers used in electronics are a £1.5 billion global business, but it’s an industry fraught with hazards for the hundreds of thousands of workers who put together everything from printed circuit boards to mobile phones. They use cleaning solvents again and again as devices go through different stages of assembly, ‘so it’s really essential that these formulations be safe for humans and the environment’, says Stacy Glass, executive director of ChemFORWARD.
Getting there requires expensive toxicology assessments for every chemical, so ChemFORWARD’s aim has been to create a library of peer-reviewed chemical hazard data that tell formulators both what not to use and what they can use instead.
Over two years, Apple has commissioned and paid for chemical hazard assessments that take account of each chemical’s lifecycle to evaluate their impact on humans and the environment. The software tool enables formulators to see whether a chemical appears on any list of banned chemicals such as the EU’s Reach regulations, or on non-regulatory lists such as Apple’s own list of restricted substances. Where a chemical isn’t yet regulated, the hazards list enables formulators to get ahead of potential restrictions by avoiding those chemicals.
Now, formulators can search for alternatives based on function or physical chemistry properties including molecular structure, boiling point or water solubility, according to their hazard rating. ‘This helps them make a more informed decision about optimising their formulation, so they could swap the [hazardous] F-rated solvent that they’re using for an A, B or C once they determine if it will work in their application,’ says Glass.
She explains that the goal is to work at both ends of the supply chain, to encourage formulators to create safer alternatives that can be verified by third parties and have a range of cleaners and degreasers that electronics manufacturers and brands can select at the procurement stage. ‘These tools are really meant to remove friction for the formulator [of] cost, time and uncertainty, while we aim to have third party verified products on the market that anybody can adopt.’
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