Trends 2026: Sharing Responsibility for Chemicals Management and Safety

The growth of the global chemical industry has created significant challenges for the environment and public health. As a result, comprehensive regulatory frameworks have been developed to keep pace with the industry's rapid innovation, at least in developed countries. However, these regulations have only been partially effective at addressing chemical production and pollution and have typically not considered the critical role of the consumption system and consumers in helping to shape the industry and its impacts on public health and environmental safety.

The recent article “Complementing Global Chemicals Management Through Shaping Consumer Behavior” proposes a consumer-oriented approach to managing chemical safety and complementing existing comprehensive chemicals regulations. It proposes marketing and behavioral-science techniques to encourage consumers to make informed choices about chemicals and chemical product consumption, which will foster demand for the production of safer chemicals and a more sustainable chemicals market, particularly in regions with weaker or no regulatory frameworks.

3E discussed the article and the implications of this research on the future of the chemical industry with lead author Dr. Brij Mohan Sharma. Dr. Sharma is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow jointly at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and RECETOX, Masaryk University, Brno in Czechia. He has cooperated and worked with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and grassroot civil organizations in developing countries. His work focuses on assessing environmental and human exposure to toxic chemicals and protecting human health and the environment by turning complex science into practical policies.

Chemical Regulations Are Weaker in Developing Countries

In developed regions and countries such as the European Union (EU), North America, and Australia, the growth of the chemical industry has been commensurate with the increasing complexity of chemical regulations. However, in developing countries like India, regulatory frameworks lag far behind the industry's growth.

“In developing countries, there are not enough modern regulations to effectively deal with these chemicals,” said Sharma. “Whatever regulations exist are largely retrospective in that they allow chemical pollution to occur first and then attempt to devise solutions, which is quite the opposite of what is happening in the European Union, which takes a prospective approach to addressing chemical pollution.”

With weak regulatory approaches in developing countries and their failure to keep pace with industry's growth, Dr. Sharma and his co-authors saw that regulations alone are not enough to support chemical safety, public health, and environmental protection.

“Quite often regulations are either poorly implemented, or they don't exist at all, particularly for emerging chemical pollutants,” said Sharma. “If they exist, they are retrospective in nature. So, how can we complement these regulations and the structure of chemical management in developing countries?”

The result of this research question was an approach that proposes giving consumers more agency in the way they consume chemicals, which will in turn shape the demand chemical producers innovate to meet.

“If people change their behavior and are better at consuming safer and more sustainable chemicals and their products, that will create a sharp demand for a market with safer and more sustainable chemicals,” said Sharma.

Sharma said that with many challenges facing the developing world, the complexity of regulating the chemical industry means neither it nor the issue of chemical pollution in particular always get the attention they deserve. Many chemical regulations are more than 50 years out of date and have not been fine-tuned to meet the demands of current policy or the market. One of the reasons for this is the need to focus on more immediate problems like child mortality and basic environmental issues, such as the availability of clean drinking water, which also require a significant portion of limited available funds allocated to the health and environmental management sector.

“In Europe, basic environmental and health problems like issues of drinking water availability and child mortality were solved several decades ago,” he said. “So, they have time, resources, and infrastructure to work on more complex and sophisticated environmental health challenges.”

Sharma notes that the environmental and health monitoring data that are necessary to support complex processes of regulatory development and implementation are also abundant in the developed world, while they are often lacking in the developing world.

“There are data available in the EU, America, Australia, or the UK on the occurrence of toxic chemicals in the environment in soil, air, and the human body. These have been accomplished through decades of investments in science through regionally and nationally coordinated serious efforts” he said. “You will rarely find this type of comprehensive data for modern or legacy chemicals in developing countries because it has not been their priority to routinely monitor them.”

Changing Chemical Industry from Bottom Up

Sharma's article is based on the premise that the current management approach for managing chemical pollution moves from the top to the bottom, regulating the industry to bring safer and more sustainable chemicals onto the market. This approach, however, often fails to capture the complexity of the chemical industry and its role in society.

“Unlike conventional legal or compliance-related offenses, chemical pollution is increasingly recognized [as] not just a result of isolated incidents of rule-breaking but as an outcome of a broader complex systemic failure driven by political, economic, and social structural flaws,” wrote Sharma and his co-authors in the article. “The usual reactive, linear, and centralized nature of traditional chemical governance is often associated with regional disparities, inhomogeneous coverage and applicability, and vulnerability to industry influence.”

Sharma believes that one approach to addressing this problem is to turn the consumer from a passive agent into an informed advocate for safer and more sustainable chemicals and their alternatives.

“We believe tackling this problem from the top down is an incomplete approach,” said Sharma. “We propose that there should be both a top-down and a bottom-up approach based on nudging consumers to demand safer and more sustainable chemicals on the market. For that, we need different types of nudging and behavioral intentions to direct consumers to create that demand.”

Behavioral Nudging in Practice

Consumer-focused measures such as behavioral nudging will allow regulatory bodies to better respond to industrial influences and enhance enforcement mechanisms. This will create a competitive market driven by increased demand for safer chemicals and chemical products, which will encourage industries to comply with chemical regulations and enhance protections for both consumers and the ecosystem, an approach that companies like IKEA have adopted to move away from the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

Sharma's article provides key actions for behavior shaping among different groups, such as the general public and farmers. Interventions and actions include targeted educational programs in accessible languages, hands-on training, and policy advocacy, with innovation opportunities related to product labeling, mobile applications for scanning products, and reward systems that acknowledge consumer sustainability efforts.

In the farming community, which has frequent exposure to chemicals during the production process, behavioral nudging efforts can include workshops and seminars on the risks of chemical exposure, practical demonstrations of chemical safety, and easily accessible online training. Social supports can also play a critical role, including community-based reward programs, a network of peer leaders who can share experiences and data-driven success stories, and social events at which farmers can discuss safety protocols.

Behavioral nudging can also play an important role in workplace chemical safety in different industries, such as chemical manufacturing, construction, oil and gas, and textiles. Information-based efforts could include mobile training specific to each role, visible safety reminders at personal protective equipment (PPE) stations, and mandatory certification programs for workers who handle chemicals.

Social networking is also critical, with peer-to-peer education and mentoring by experienced workers, online platforms to share information, and an anonymous reporting system for unsafe behavior or exposure incidents.

In their article, Sharma et al. noted that while some might criticize this approach as being soft or ineffective to accommodate the complexity of the chemical industry, behavioral nudging has a long history of success when used in a more negative way. For example, the tobacco, alcohol, and fast-food industries effectively use colorful labeling, promote mixed messaging, and manipulate cognitive biases - what Sharma et al. called “dark nudges and sludge” - to encourage consumption of their products, despite their acknowledged negative health impacts.

Sharma et al. noted, however, that while information and knowledge are important, changing behavior will be a much more effective approach to encouraging consumers to demand safer and more sustainable chemicals.

“Consider a farmer purchasing pesticides,” said Sharma. “The objective is to communicate clearly that certain chemicals pose risks to him, crop consumers, and the environment. While appropriate labeling is essential, it is not necessary to overwhelm him with scientific details on toxicological mechanisms or health impacts. Instead, labeling should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Safer alternatives should be readily available and as visible at point-of-purchase as the more toxic pesticides, and distributors or the middleman should be equipped to actively promote these safer choices.”

Role of Community and Personal Connection

Regulations are rules meant for everyone, and they have little flexibility for being adapted to individuals or communities. Sharma said that part of the behavioral-nudging and consumer-advocacy approach is encouraging on-the-ground interactions among the people most likely impacted by chemical safety.

“Communities can benefit from role models and social influencers who provide subtle but effective nudges and guidance,” said Sharma. “For example, highlighting a farmer who reduced pesticide use while growing higher-quality organic crop yield and increased profit through premium pricing can be a powerful demonstration. Village leaders could actively promote such individuals as role models.” Sharma also noted that in some regions, public influencers and other celebrity figures have considerable influence over consumer behavior, and that this influence, which is often used to promote alcohol or tobacco products, could be leveraged to promote healthier and more sustainable chemical consumption choices.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) can also play a critical role in helping to shape consumer behavior, since they often have a deep understanding of local cultural values and have earned the trust of the communities in which they work. When working in collaboration with environmental scientists and other industry stakeholders, they can provide community engagement and monitoring, grassroots advocacy, and engagement with other key stakeholders, and they can play an important role in co-designing behavioral interventions that meet local needs.

“The role of CSOs and researchers is very important when you have to tackle the problem of inertia related to making bad choices that are cheaper or more convenient,” said Sharma. “When you install this type of support at the ground level, it could work wonders at nudging and influencing people to choose safer and more sustainable chemicals and chemical products.”

This series of Trends 2026 articles examines how the convergence of manufacturing transformation, market volatility, and product stewardship evolution with chemical risk management and compliance have created major opportunities and challenges for companies in the chemical sector in 2026 and beyond.