The Environmental Protection Agency has been on a monthslong sprint to make sure enough effective and safe disinfectants are available, and it’s likely that work won’t slow down anytime soon.
The EPA is racing on two fronts, largely under the radar. The agency’s chemicals office has sped up its approval process for disinfectants that can kill the coronavirus in order to get more effective alternatives in stores and for sale online as big brand names such as Lysol and Clorox fly off the shelves. In addition, EPA enforcement officials have been policing the borders and online retailers to halt the sale of unregistered products.
As parts of the country begin to reopen, the EPA’s work will become even more critical, especially as retailers say one of the biggest challenges will be making sure enough supplies are available to clean and disinfect businesses, schools, and other public spaces.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler says the agency is working quickly. On March 6, the agency had just 60 products approved to combat the coronavirus. Now, the EPA has approved more than 350 disinfectants.
“Our career scientists have been working overtime to get more and more products approved in order to make sure the American public has as many choices as possible,” Wheeler told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
The agency regulates surface disinfectants as part of its pesticides program, and it oversees a running list of products that are approved to combat the novel coronavirus, known as List N. In the past two months, the EPA has dramatically shortened the process to OK new disinfectants, cutting the timeline down from a couple of months to a couple of weeks, Wheeler said.
That expedited process is available to disinfectants that are already registered with the EPA and that don’t involve a review of new data. To be approved, companies must demonstrate that the product is effective against harder-to-kill viruses or against another type of human coronavirus.
“This is pretty unprecedented. It’s the first time that this process is being used” since being put together in 2016, said Kathleen Stanton, associate vice president of technical and international affairs for the American Cleaning Institute.
Stanton said her group’s members, which include disinfectant makers such as the Clorox Company, S.C. Johnson, and GOJO Industries (the maker of Purell), are working closely with the EPA and have found the process to be pretty efficient.
In addition, Wheeler said the EPA has addressed supply chain issues. For example, the EPA removed a requirement that manufacturers seek approval from the agency if they change suppliers for certain inert ingredients, which are ingredients such as solvents or fragrances that are also used in disinfectants.
Wheeler said the EPA has also stepped in to ensure that manufacturing facilities that are important in chemical companies’ supply chains are classified as critical facilities that would remain open during state-level shutdowns.
Retailers can benefit from more products being added to the EPA’s list, said Jon Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy for the National Retail Federation.
“I think the biggest concern for retailers is the availability of cleaning products,” he said. “There’s still some shortages that retailers are trying to work through” so that both the retailers and customers have access to cleaning products.
Beyond the approval process, the EPA is on the enforcement beat to make sure that unregistered products aren’t on the shelves or being sold online. The agency is partnering with Customs and Border Patrol, for example, and together, they’ve stopped more than 7,000 illegal products from entering the country, said Susan Bodine, who leads the EPA’s enforcement office.
Bodine said EPA officials are also constantly policing online retailers to make sure that the products being sold are on the agency’s approved list. Just recently, the EPA put eight online retailers, including Facebook and eBay, on notice that the agency had found unregistered products on their sites, she added.
The EPA, working with the Justice Department, has made at least one arrest so far. A woman in Georgia was caught selling products through the mail, so-called “Virus Shut Out” lanyards, which she claimed would protect people against the virus like portable air cleaners.
Those aren’t the only illegal products the EPA has found on the market either. Bodine said the agency has a number of other active investigations that aren’t yet public.
“Whenever there’s a crisis like this, you’re always going to find snake oil salesmen trying to take advantage of it,” Wheeler said. “And they have moved into the 21st century of online retail, and so that’s why we have also moved into the 21st century as far as enforcement tactics and monitoring online activity in order to crack down on bad actors like this.”
More broadly, EPA officials say they want to ensure that people are identifying the right products and using them properly. The EPA has made its list accessible on mobile devices, for example, to improve the resource for consumers, said Alexandra Dunn, who leads the EPA’s chemical safety office.
The EPA also recently released cleaning and disinfecting guidelines alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Environmental advocates say disinfectants should always be used with caution because they contain ingredients that can have acute and long-term health effects.
“In their fervor to kill [the coronavirus] on the surfaces and objects they interact with, people may be unknowingly exposing themselves to hazardous chemicals and mixtures,” said Samara Geller, a senior researcher at the Environmental Working Group. The group compiled a list of 16 products, including products made by Clorox, Lysol, and Seventh Generation, that it says don’t have ingredients that harm human health.
Geller also warned that people shouldn’t mix disinfectants because those blends could be toxic.
People should be especially careful using products with bleach, a common and inexpensive disinfectant, said Mark Miller, who co-directs the Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at the University of California, San Francisco.
Bleach-related poisonings have been common calls to poison centers, and that’s only increased since March, when the pandemic really picked up in the United States, he said. Miller added that mixing bleach with other products “is dangerous and should never be done under any circumstance.”
Most importantly, environmentalists, industry experts, and EPA officials all emphasized that people should read the labels of products before using them.
“Frankly, most of us don’t read the labels on our household cleaning products. They seem to be fairly self-explanatory,” Dunn told the Washington Examiner. “We’re not suggesting that they’re that complicated, but things like contact time and wearing proper protective gloves are important.”
