The electronics industry is now being impacted by a rapidly growing number of chemical regulations and substance restrictions. In the light of this trend, there is a significant risk of facing multiple substitutions for the same application unless potential replacement technologies are properly assessed against environmental and human health criteria in advance of their widespread adoption. To ensure that replacements for restricted substances have lower impact to human health and the environment, it is essential to be able to determine the impacts of the alternatives compared with the original substances. In this work, we evaluated tools and methods for comparing restricted substances to their alternatives, including restricted substance list (RSL) screening, risk phrase or hazard statement screening, multi‐criteria decision analysis, life‐cycle analysis (LCA), risk assessment and hazard scoring schemes. This chapter describes how these tools were incorporated into an integrated alternatives assessment protocol for evaluating the environmental and human health impacts of replacements for restricted substances.

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Abstract-With the introduction of materials specific legislation, such as RoHS in 2003, the pace of change of materials in the electronics industry has seen a dramatic increase. Changing materials is costly, and an important business need is the development of a process to select alternatives that will not need to be substituted in the future. To guard against multiple substitutions, the alternatives selected need to have lower impacts on human health and the environment. According to the principles of green chemistry the most efficient way to reduce overall risk is to use less hazardous materials in product design. To guard against regrettable substitution, and future restriction, an alternatives assessment process including chemical hazard assessment as the first step in the process is described. Example applications of the alternatives assessment process are introduced.