Here's my take on what the credits are doing and some reactions from the HBN POV:
The USGBC is taking very significant important steps forward with the Chemicals of Concern credits in LEED 2012. We laud them and urge support for this effort while noting some significant fixes still to be made to insure effectiveness.

The Material Ingredient Reporting credit requires disclosure of content or health hazard at minimum for any content meeting the criteria of the Green Screen Benchmark One, including residuals to 100ppm. One point is provided for meeting this requirement for 20% of interior materials.

While we would prefer a simple full disclosure requirement, this requirement to encourage disclosure of highest concern Benchmark One contents is significant and we think will support the movement toward even more complete disclosure of the complete range of significant hazards. We share concerns raise by others that

The Avoidance of Chemicals of Concern credit takes a modest forward on actual avoidance and a potentially larger step forward on the gathering of chemical safety information. This credit has been reworked in this version to parallel chemical legislation that is already in force in Europe, rewarding avoidance of chemicals on the REACH Substances of Very High Concern list and REACH or equivalent registration for all ingredients. The credit is optional and gives projects one point for demonstrating compliance with both the SVHC avoidance and reporting requirements for 20% of all products in the building and a second point if they can reach 30%.

The SVHC avoidance requirement is more modest than we would like as it only includes 14 substances, just a few of which regularly appear in building materials. Those few are, however, a set of phthalates and flame retardants which have been part of the credits initiated in health care and are a good first step forward.

The registration requirement is quite interesting, requiring that companies demonstrate that all ingredients have either had chemical safety reports submitted into the European REACH process or an equivalent third party system outside of Europe. Stimulating registration and reporting on chemical safety is an important step forward and can act to reinforce and amplify the data gathering that is happening in Europe under REACH here, align with and build on OSHA’s effort to institute Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for Safety Data Sheets (SDS) reporting in the US over the next few years and accelerate the industry’s ability to more fully report as required by the Health Product Declaration (HPD).

The credit has some significant bugs still to work out to be effective – most notably that exempt products may be able to fulfill the 20 & 30% requirements without stimulating any additional registration or avoidance, providing a path to essentially bypass the intent of the credit. Additionally, getting the mechanisms in place for third party REACH equivalence and engaging enough of the supply chain in the US could take some time and leave many manufacturers with no pathway to participate for many years.

We support what the USGBC is attempting to do with this credit and encourage them to continue to move forward in this direction. Many of the concerns will only be able to be sorted out through implementation in credits. That said we strongly encourage the USGBC to implement some critical fixes to make this credit work
- Require certain product categories with known health hazards to be included within the minimum 20%, OR eliminate certain typically benign product categories from being included in the 20%. The USGBC should also be prepared to ratchet the threshold up as the level of usage of inherently benign materials is identified to insure this is a leadership standard.
- Provide an alternative avoidance only pathway – such as avoidance of the SVHC Candidate list to facilitate immediate implementation of the credit while the larger registration system is being developed .