As part of the US government’s recently announced plans for tougher regulation of potentially toxic or hazardous chemicals – see Plasteurope.com 21.10.2009 – the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, www.epa.gov) has said it will phase out brominated flame retardants based on DecaBDE (decabrom) by 2013. Leading producers Chemtura (Middlebury, Connecticut / USA; www.chemtura.com) and Albemarle (Baton Rouge, Louisiana / USA; www.albemarle.com) have already announced phase-out plans.

Chemtura, which – in unrelated news – recently extended its deadline for emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings from March 2010 to mid-2010 (see Plasteurope.com of 20.03.2009), said it will phase out production and sales of type “DE-83R” by the end of 2012, starting with consumer electronics and home furnishings and followed by transportation and industrial applications. For some specialised military uses, production will continue into 2013. Without giving a specific timetable, Albemarle said it would begin “an important shift” toward a phase-out.

Both companies said they will be able to offer customers suitable alternatives to the decabrom products, which both nevertheless regard as safe and effective. Chemtura will establish annual targets for reducing production and sales and report to the EPA production, import, export and sales volumes as well as year-end inventories of the flame retardants concerned. Albemarle said that, among existing alternatives, it has developed a “recyclable and environmentally friendly” polymer-based flame retardant technology known as “GreenArmor” to substitute its decabrom technology.

According to the EPA, the agreement to phase out decabrom, which has been on the market for many years, “exposes the gaps in the 33-year old federal Toxic Substances Control Act.” This, it said, “has allowed production and use of toxic chemicals without safety evaluations.” The agency said extensive tests have found that the chemical is “highly likely to disrupt normal human development.”