\nHeather McKenney and David Bourne. <\/p>\n
Benn Craig\/Belfer Center<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
McKenney said there are well-intentioned companies that want to certify their products as safe, but struggle keeping track of every chemical used in their supply chain, and what the impacts of those chemicals are.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s tons of toxicology data out there, and how do we start to apply and share that information such that it\u2019s not just siloed in a REACH dossier in the EU or in an individual organization who\u2019s developed that data?\u201d she said, referring to the EU\u2019s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals regulation. \u201cWe\u2019ve developed a methodology that houses the chemical hazard assessments across 24-plus human and environmental health endpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the human side, ChemFORWARD assesses a chemical\u2019s carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, reproductive toxicity, skin irritation, eye irritation, and neurotoxicity, among other things. On the environmental side, they measure things like persistence, or the ability of chemicals to break down.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the totality of the data, we then take the totality of the hazards and send an overall hazard classification, or what we call our hazard bands,\u201d McKenney said.<\/p>\n
ChemFORWARD hazard bands fall into alphabetical rankings (A, B, C, etc.,) but are also categorized based on how much data is available about a given substance. There are chemicals marked with a question mark when the data is deemed insufficient.<\/p>\n
Bourne said companies like his are partnering with ChemFORWARD as an important step toward creating healthier products at his firm and across the private sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we realize in partnership with ChemFORWARD is that every time we do a chemical hazard assessment, it\u2019s not just proprietary information for Google or for whoever did the assessment. It\u2019s now available to anyone who wants to try to platform. And so the scalability that creates is really what we saw as transformational,\u201d he said. \u201cThe analogy I like to give is if you wanted to watch a great TV show, and you had to pay a Hollywood studio to make a show just for you, it would cost you an absurd amount of money. Because they have lots of subscribers to a streaming platform, everyone can contribute and get access to a whole body of content that is valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles Taylor, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said this type of information-gathering could have important benefits beyond the private sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of information is really important to get out to researchers and others who can … assess if we see chronic effects or downstream effects,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Roy Family Award is presented biannually to celebrate an outstanding cross-sector partnership that enhances environmental quality through novel and creative approaches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Health Is your shirt making you sick? Anna Lamb Harvard Staff Writer March 28, 2025 4 min read ChemFORWARD, winner of Belfer Center award, explains how its database of industrial chemicals can help protect human, environmental health Have you ever thought of the chemicals that went into making your iPhone? Your favorite pleather chair? The shirt on your back? It takes thousands of chemicals to produce things we use every day, and some of them could be harmful to both your health and the planet\u2019s. ChemFORWARD, the 2024 winner of Harvard Kennedy School\u2019s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership, is trying to make our products safer by creating a database of industrial chemicals and their effects on human and environmental health. Heather McKenney, the science and safer chemistry lead at ChemFORWARD, was joined by Kennedy School experts as well as David Bourne, lead sustainability strategist at Google, in a panel last week at the Kennedy School\u2019s Malkin Penthouse to discuss the company\u2019s work as well as challenges the private sector faces in trying to reduce chemical hazards. \u201cWe live in a world with thousands of chemicals,\u201d said Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-highlights"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessdigest4u.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}