Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

Well, speaking of how to define something, we have another story, this one out of Canada, and that country is looking to develop rules to define the criteria as to what constitutes carcinogenic, mutagenic, or re-reprotoxic substances, also known as CMR substances.

Now, these potential regulations actually stem from changes that, uh, Canada's lawmakers made back in 2023 to its main chemicals management law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA.

Now, prior to 2023, if a substance met CEPA's criteria for toxicity, it could be added to the CEPA Schedule 1 list of toxic substances, and that's still the case.

But the 2023 changes to CEPA split that Schedule 1 list into two parts.

We're going to do this now.

In 2021, the government added plastic manufactured items to the list of toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

That listing gave it the legal power to regulate plastic.

Its first move was a ban on six single-use items, checkout bags, cutlery, certain food service containers, six-pack rings, stir sticks, and straws.

Our companies had trouble dealing with REACH.

Even Canada, CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, was recognized as being, you know, more protective of the public's health.

And I think that that was, you know, our exceptionalism had kind of gone away.

People, we had an advantage in commerce that we had chemicals that were approved in the United States.

The agency essentially said there are substantial gaps in the evidence, including limited information about concentrations, dermal and oral absorption, mechanisms, and dermal toxicity for many PFAS.

In Feb 2026, Environment and Climate Change Canada announced that Estee Lauder Cosmetics had been fined $750,000 after pleading guilty to two violations of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Enforcement officers found the company was selling certain eyeliner products listing a PFAS ingredient that they didn't notify the government of.

Let's be honest, most consumers would look at the words of a PFAS ingredient on the back of an eyeliner and probably have no idea what it means.