Nothing is more important to Kimberly-Clark than the quality and safety of our products and the well-being of the consumers who use them. We have rigorous safety and quality requirements and we are proud of our long track record of producing safe products. This commitment to safety includes the ingredients used in our products.

We maintain a Restricted Substances List to provide a consistent, global approach to safeguarding our consumers and the environment from exposure to ingredients of potential concern. We are committed to reducing or eliminating restricted substances and to implementing the use of alternatives through our continuous research and development efforts.

Restricted Substances Management at Kimberly-Clark is based on the following principles:

• Maintain a Restricted Substances List (RSL)* that contains restricted (limits established by product or material) and prohibited ingredients relevant to Kimberly-Clark products. (Note that the Kimberly-Clark RSL represents a small subset of chemicals that we prohibit. There are many more chemicals that we would prohibit but do not list since they would not be considered for use in the products we produce).
• Formally review substances and ingredients in our products to ensure they meet current regulatory requirements and public safety expectations (Kimberly-Clark Product Safety Policy).
• Proactively monitor and assess new information regarding ingredients published by scientific research and regulatory agencies globally, as well as public concern, to ensure the RSL remains current.
• Provide an active process for identification, review, and communication of the RSL to enable the proactive development of business strategies to remove and/or reduce specific chemicals of concern, and advance safer alternatives, in some instances above and beyond regulatory requirements.
• Collaborate with supply chain partners to reduce, eliminate, or manage chemicals identified by Kimberly-Clark on the RSL.

We require our suppliers to adhere to the Kimberly-Clark RSL, and to have processes and systems in place to ensure compliance.

Residuals at Kimberly-Clark:

* We do not add the materials identified on our Restricted Substances List to our products, however, we cannot always eliminate unavoidable traces of compounds that can originate from a variety of sources such as the manufacturing process or simply from the environment. To learn more, see Residuals.