Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families

A national effort to protect families from toxic chemicals.

Mind the Store

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Best Buy: Protect Americans from toxic plastic chemicals banned in European TVs

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About the campaign

Retailers have the power and a moral responsibility to ensure that consumer products and packaging are free of harmful chemicals. With great market power comes great responsibility. The Mind the Store campaign challenges the largest retailers to eliminate toxic chemicals in products and packaging and develop comprehensive safer chemicals policies. To protect families, communities, and workers, we are working to transform the marketplace and drive a competitive race to the top. Learn more.

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Toxic TVs: Best Buy’s step in the right direction should go further

Best Buy launched a chemicals policy in 2017 but didn’t publish the list of chemicals it is restricting until recently. While a step in the right direction, the list of chemicals does not go far enough — it is woefully inadequate in addressing harmful flame retardants and other toxics. In the year ahead, Best Buy must significantly expand its list of restricted chemicals and ban toxic flame retardants in the enclosures of all televisions it sells.

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Market shift – retailers taking action on PFAS in food packaging, carpeting, and more

On December 11, 2018, Whole Foods Market made a dramatic announcement. Effective immediately, all prepared food and bakery packaging that tested positive for long-lived, potentially toxic chemicals were removed from its nearly 500 stores. The company said: “We’re actively working with our suppliers to find and scale new compostable packaging options.”

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Eight reasons to actually celebrate on National Teflon Day

Today is National Teflon Day—but that is NOT cause for celebration. It is one of the worst “holidays” we can imagine because it’s the anniversary of the accidental invention of the first non-stick chemical that would eventually become Teflon in 1938. Since then, chemical companies have invented many other chemicals in the same class—per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). And these chemicals, which are used for stain, grease, and water resistance, have gone on the market with little to no testing, ending up in everyday products and contaminating our food, air, water, and bodies.

Although the Trump administration has fallen down on the job of protecting us from PFAS, public health advocates have worked alongside Congress, states, cities, and retailers to pick up the baton and run with it. And we’re making good progress!