While the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025 is now being considered in the Senate, the version of the bill in the House of Representatives already directs the Department of Defense (DoD) to purchase cleaning products that do not contain dangerous chemicals such as PFAS and instead use safer chemical ingredients.
The Senate should do the same in its bill.
Purchasing products that use safer chemicals would help protect military personnel, their families, and civilian employees in the more than 2.3 billion square meters of building space is administered by the Ministry of Defense. The military’s billion-dollar purchasing power would also help stimulate the market for safer products.
EPAs Safer choice Labels give consumers confidence that a product avoids many known dangerous chemicals and has been tested by the government. Cleaning products certified Safer Choice do not contain fluorinated substances such as PFAS and other toxic chemicals that may cause cancer or have reproductive and developmental effects. Safer Choice also provides an incentive for major brands and retailers to reformulate their products with safer alternatives.
The EPA’s Safer Choice program has proven successful in helping purchasers, retailers, product formulators and ingredient manufacturers find safer solutions. When applying for certification, companies submit their product’s full ingredient list to Safer Choice for review. Nothing can violate the Safer Choice standard, including “inert” ingredients or fragrances. The EPA also helps companies find safer alternatives to problematic ingredients.
More than 98% of the more than 1,700 Safer Choice certified products are manufactured or sold by companies based in the United States.
In recent years, Congress has made protecting military personnel from toxic chemicals a priority in the NDAA and other legislation, including a ban on the use of PFAS in food packaging for military meals, a ban on the use of fluorinated aqueous film-forming foam in the 2020 NDAA, and restrictions on the purchase of firefighting equipment containing PFAS in the 2023 NDAA.
To protect the health of military members, their families, and civilian workers, Congress should further build on this track record by directing the Department of Defense to use Safer Choice cleaning products in the final NDAA fiscal year of 2025.
Tell your senators: Protect the military and their families from toxic chemicals!
Read more about the Safer Choice program.
