Canada’s Triple Regulatory Threat

Biocide preservatives contained in many products including paint, coatings, adhesives & sealants are critical to prevent spoilage of critical construction products, like a coating, and the many surfaces to which they are applied. It’s one of those things that we take for granted. That the stain on your deck will extend the life for many years or the paint on your car will outlast many winters. Without a biocide preventing contamination of those products, neither your deck nor your car’s protective coating will last many Canadian winters and hot summers.

CPCA and its member companies have been engaged with the responsible authority (PMRA) charged with reviewing those critical preservatives and their impacts on health and/or the environment. The more restrictive approach taken on biocide assessment began in 2018 with the preservative used extensively in paint and coatings. Thankfully when PMRA assessed all the data they reversed the ban shortly thereafter. To prevent that from occurring again CPCA worked with PMRA officials to create a substantive Coatings and Adhesives Working Group to better engage on future risk assessment and most importantly the need to align with our largest trading partner, the United States. Unfortunately, that could have worked out better as PMRA moved forward with bans and use restrictions for?six?critical biocides used for in-can and film preservation late last year. CPCA and individual members have extensively highlighted concerns with increasing bans and restrictions, but frankly, engagement over the 2 years leading up to the most recent bans and use restrictions was less than robust.

Canada Must Not Copy the EU Model

It seems that Canada is now following Europe’s lead over the past dozen years. Our friends in Europe, and associations representing paint and coatings in the EU, CEPE, have gone through grueling challenges related to biocide that are so critical for paint preservation. CEPE made a strong case over the past 10 years stating;

“Biocide preservatives are absolutely essential to preserve both water-based paint in the can as well the coating after application with dry-film preservatives.”

Without one or both, the paint is rendered useless as are the substrates to which they are applied. Those substrates include assets of every imaginable kind from floors, walls, decks, private and public infrastructure, heavy equipment, etc.

CPCA has been grappling with these issues in earnest since 2017 and the number of preservatives now available in Canada is very slim. And, with recent cancelations and use restrictions imposed by PMRA, there will be fewer product choices because many products will not be free from microbial contamination, and a lot of paint?spoiled.?In fact, many have argued that with less preservation due to the lower levels permitted for preservation, there will be more health issues not less. Over the past number of years, biocides for paint preservation have been reduced from 45 to now only 13, and counting. This is especially concerning in the case of water-based products,?more naturally prone to potential biocontamination,?which now constitute the lion’s share of architectural products on the market in Canada. ? Compounding these concerns is the recent federal Government crack-down on squirts of biocide preservatives in paint, effectively?now?0.02?to?0.20% of the paint product.??Regulations will be published in the?Canada Gazette, Part 1?very soon, further reducing the VOCs contained in architectural paint. That will lead to more frequent painting due to lack of product performance as Canada has a much colder climate than California.

Combining that with fewer effective biocides will lead to even more products being removed from commerce in Canada. In fact, removing VOCs from AIM products will require even higher concentrations of biocide preservatives, not less. Plus, any paint that remains on the market will be much more prone to contamination and spoilage, which could also cause more – not less – health issues. Finally, when paint succumbs to microbial damage it is no longer recyclable, which means it will more likely end up in landfill than recycled back in the can, so to speak, and on the wall. The 22 million kilograms?of?waste paint?recycled in Canada last year will likely end up down the drain or in landfill as the can of paint will be crawling with microbes shortly after opening or before, depending on how low the biocide concentrations go.

Canada Must Align with Its Largest Trading Partner

It?must?be noted that the US Government has NOT regulated to the same degree for the same biocides noted above and the preservatives recently cancelled in Canada will still be available to companies in the US.? However, these companies will still be prevented from shipping products to Canada. That means competition will be reduced as will consumer choice, all of which leads to higher consumer costs ultimately. Canada is doomed to follow the road of Europe for biocides as noted by CEPE:

“With the implementation of the EU Regulation N° 528/2012 on biocidal products (BPR), we are increasingly concerned about the future availability of effective preservatives. Biocides are products defined as additives for paints used in small amounts and the review program in the EU is expected to fail … because of the very heavy and costly requirements, the extremely complex ever-changing guidelines, and the conservatism based on the precautionary principle, the addition of new criteria such as endocrine disruption, the need to get through harmonized classification, the lack of resources and/or competence in national ministries, the necessary renewal of active substances and products, the need to discuss issues with mutual recognition, etc.”

We are already on the same path in Canada, even though both Canada and the US are highly integrated economies representing the largest trading block in the world. CEPE has plainly stated in recent documents that the biocide issue must be addressed: “The official aim is to improve the functioning of the internal market while ensuring a high level of safety for human health and the environment. The less official objective is to eliminate or reduce as much as possible the use of biocides. It further maintains that this is the case because the BPR lies in unbalanced regulatory hands and this has been the case for over 20 years. We are operating in a highly political environment.” One might say Canada is now in that very same boat.

What Next in Canada

What to do next is the question CEPE asked in the EU and CPCA is now asking as well in Canada. It would appear CEPE has made some progress on that front, while it remains a struggle for?CPCA.??CEPE?states that: “It has taken us over eight years to have decision-makers accept that there is, indeed, an issue and that it needs to be solved and to get the European Commission to propose a solution for paints. The proposal aims at maintaining the possibility of selling consumer paints even when these treated articles are classified as skin sensitizers under CLP. This is very much welcome as the official body in charge of reclassifying substances are following a conservative approach nowadays by setting very low specific concentration limits for the?isothiazolinone?substances?(ITAs).?CEPE is expecting the EC to adopt this position in implementing its regulation approving BIT, which will set a precedent for other skin sensitizers.”

Will Canada do the same? CPCA and other groups continue to engage with whomever will listen in getting more understanding of the complexity of biocides used in literally thousands of CASE products. Many in the field say they want to understand more about that complexity, but it is unclear if understanding will lead to a point where the industry can retain the few critical biocides remaining in Canada or add more. CEPE contracted a study on a socio-economic impact assessment for both in-can and dry-film preservatives, which is very revealing. The overall conclusions are as follows:

“Overall, considering all market segments, this study indicates that reduced availability and use or non-use of priority biocides are likely to result in the closure of up to 31 percent of the businesses surveyed and the partial closure of up to 47% of businesses resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs in Europe. The socio-economic costs of the four theoretical restriction scenarios, intermediate and worst case for key biocides, range between 115 million Euros and 3.55 billion Euros, with many companies struggling even more in the worst-case scenarios than in the intermediate scenarios. Additionally, issues associated with reduced lifespan, product quality, and infeasibility of biocide-free alternatives may have significant impacts on the livelihoods of industrial workers, professional painters, and artists, as well as cultural heritage, visible social inequality between those who can afford professional decorators and those who cannot alongside severely reducing the product range available for consumers.”

We are waiting to see if there is a way forward that will account for the complexity of?risk-assessing CASE-related biocides in Canada.

Canada’s Triple Regulatory Threat

Canada must consider the relevance and proportionality when making decisions to address human health or environmental concerns vis-à-vis the contribution to sustainability from coatings that extend the lifecycle of thousands of materials requiring less harvesting of both renewable and non-renewable resources?and generating less waste.? And, also?consider?the negative health effects of?handling unsuccessfully treated?paint?using biocides?that cannot effectively prevent microbial contamination.

Thus, in Canada, such a regulatory approach for paint biocides is a triple threat: loss of effective microbial control for much-needed functional products; loss of protection from negative health effects with ineffective microbial control; and loss of business and jobs with higher cost for the remaining CASE consumer products?in Canada.