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About the Flame Retardants in Printed Circuit Boards Partnership
Flame Retardants in Printed Circuit Boards Partnership Home page | About This Project | Milestones | Publications | Partners
The goal of this multi-stakeholder partnership is to identify and evaluate commercially available flame retardants and their environmental, human health and safety and environmental fate aspects in FR-4 printed circuit boards.
The partnership will incorporate life-cycle thinking into the project as it explores the potential hazards associated with flame retardants and potential exposures throughout the life cycle of flame retardants as used in FR-4 printed circuit boards. As appropriate, the scope will include aspects of the life cycle where public and occupational exposures could occur. For example, consideration of exposures from incineration or burning at the end of life will be included, as will exposures from manufacturing and use.
Although the analysis will explore hazard data associated with potential exposure scenarios, the partnership does not intend to conduct a full risk assessment. Likewise, the project will not be a complete life-cycle analysis, which inventories inputs and outputs from all (or most) processes throughout the life cycle and evaluates the environmental impacts associated with those inputs and outputs.
The initial hazard assessment will be conducted using EPA’s criteria for the New Chemical’s Program to evaluate hazard concerns for each flame retardant formulation. Further work will be conducted to investigate potential exposure scenarios during the product lifecycle. In addition to influencing design decisions, this information will inform industry and other stakeholders on environmentally preferable disposal or recycling scenarios.