Declare Red List Free products, delivered as rows

Six of them decide almost every Red List screen:

1. declarationStatus / isRedListFree - the tier assignment and its boolean shadow. Filter here, never on product names, because marketing names drift between versions while the recorded tier is the auditable claim.
2. materials[].substances[] - the nested disclosure per substance: chemicalName, casrn, EC number, percentage range, redListStatus (black, grey or yellow) and any approved exception. This is where a reformulation between product versions actually shows up.
3. REACH SVHC and SIN flags - boolean screens of every substance against the EU candidate list of substances of very high concern and the ChemSec SIN list, which makes the registry joinable to your own chemical watchlists instead of a closed universe.
4. thirdPartyVerified plus the assessor name - whether an independent party checked the disclosure, and who. Self-declared and verified labels coexist in the catalog.
5. expiresTime - the lapse date governing currency, with lastUpdatedTime recording when the record was last revised.
6. CDPH and VOC test-method fields - the versioned emissions method the product satisfies, useful the moment a specification cites a standard by number.

embodiedCarbon rides along where a manufacturer completed an LCA or EPD, blank otherwise, with a completion flag separating not measured from measured at zero. Two classic mistakes account for most bad screening output: reading a Declared label as Red List Free because both sound green, and collapsing percentage ranges to midpoints - the ranges are the honest number.

A defensible single-project screen runs in six steps, and the ordering matters more than any tooling:

1. Start from delivered label rows and filter on the recorded tier. Restrict to RedListFree when the specification demands it; keep the other 911 labels in view, because a Red List Approved substitute often exists where no Free option does.
2. Cut candidates by CSI division before chemistry - finishes, furnishings and thermal protection cover most institutional scopes, and division-level filtering keeps the survivor list human-sized.
3. Open the substance rows beneath each survivor. Tier status is the summary; the ingredient rows are the evidence, and they are where substitutions and reformulations surface.
4. Check expiresTime before anything reaches a submittal. A label nearing expiry earns a re-check against the live registry, and the timestamp of your screening cut belongs in the project record.
5. Cross-check the emissions side. Green Seal's GS-11 directory lists 28 certified paints, coatings and adhesives, and GREENGUARD certificates ride inside UL SPOT's 180,000-plus sustainable-product records - disclosure and emissions testing certify different things, which is why both belong in the same workflow rather than being treated as interchangeable ecolabels.
6. Document the credit trail. Label records carry LEED v4 option flags, and screening disclosed ingredients this way is the documented route to material-ingredient credit work, with the low-emitting-materials side evidenced from the certification registries in step five.

Run honestly, the sequence is an afternoon of analysis rather than an afternoon of plumbing - which is the point of receiving rows that arrive already shaped.

Four green registries serve the building-products slice, and they answer different questions. Only Declare exposes ingredient chemistry; the other three certify outcomes or endorsements around the product.

Green Seal Certified Products Directory certifies formulas against published standards - the GS-11 paints, coatings and adhesives slice holds 28 products inside a roughly 360-company certified index, each entry stamped with the standard edition it cleared and the LEED credits it contributes to. A GS-11 certificate says an independent certifier assessed the formula against VOC limits and prohibited carcinogens; it never names the full ingredient list.

GREENGUARD Certified Product Database certifies what a product gives off, not what goes into it: chamber testing against UL 2818 screening for more than 15,000 VOCs, with the stricter Gold tier adding limits on 360-plus further compounds aligned to California's CDPH Standard Method - the acceptance criterion school and healthcare specifications cite.

GreenSpec — Green Building Product Directory is the UK counterpoint: roughly 238 editorially endorsed products across eight Uniclass-style levels and about 100 leaf categories, each carrying an environmental metrics block for composition, recycled content and EPD status. Endorsement by practising architects, not chemistry to the CAS number.

The rule of thumb falls out of the comparison: directories say how a product sells, evaluation reports say whether it passes, performance databases say how it measures - and only an ingredient registry tells you what is inside it. Specification teams that treat the four as interchangeable discover the difference at submittal, when a reviewer asks for the one they did not collect.

• Architects, specifiers and sustainability leads run the step-five workflow above at submittal time, where a tier flag and an expiry date settle arguments that otherwise take a week of email.

• E-commerce and procurement operators filter candidate assortments to Red List Free, low-emission products by CSI division before anyone opens a datasheet.

• Competitive intelligence and product teams track reformulation through tier changes: upgrades from Declared to Red List Approved to Red List Free reveal which manufacturers are investing in cleaner chemistries, product line by product line.

• Journalists, academics and ESG reporters cite product-level disclosures with printed Declare IDs attached, so a claim traces to a specific label rather than a sustainability brochure.

• Developers and data-product builders power material-health lookup features on a stable schema where every product carries its own verification and expiry state.

This article is the material-health chapter of Datadory's building-products pool. Continue with:

1. Declare — Building Product Ingredient Disclosure Database - the dataset product page behind every number above, with the full field dictionary, sample rows and coverage chips.
2. Building products data guide - the pillar mapping all 24 pooled building-products records, including the macro-demand clusters this article skips.
3. Green Seal vs GREENGUARD vs GreenSpec side by side in the best building products datasets ranking, scored on the same rubric.
4. Window U-factor & SHGC ratings database - the fenestration ratings layer, if the next specification decision turns on thermal performance instead of ingredients.
5. The building products data hub indexes every record in the cluster with field dictionary and coverage statement. When brochure claims need to become screened rows, request a sample.