Safer, Sustainable Chemicals Hard to Find But Efforts Continue

Regulatory requirements for safer, more sustainable chemicals don’t always align with governmental clean energy and other goals, according to speakers at a chemical regulations conference.

For example, the European Union wants to ban as part of its Green Deal polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF), a coating that’s used on electric vehicle batteries to prevent fires, said MaryAnn Hoff, global director of environmental, health, safety, and product stewardship at PPG Industries Inc.

Yet coating manufacturers haven’t been able to find an effective alternative, and electric vehicles are essential to achieving the Green Deal’s goal of carbon neutrality, she said Wednesday at the Global ...