That's a tougher question to answer, but let me explain the basis of our work, again bearing in mind that at the time of the 1999 audit, we were interested in more than just CEPA toxics.
There was at least one major initiative at the time, called the ARET program--the accelerated reduction/elimination of toxics. It was in effect a program sponsored by a number of NGOs, industry groups in the government, as a means to get action faster. In those days, in the 1990s, volunteerism was in. Regulatory controls were out; they were expensive, the departments were going through program review, and industry was willing to step up to the plate and volunteer. It's probably the case that those voluntary efforts did result in reductions.
Our beef, though, was basically that ARET had a number of substances that were determined to be high-priority toxics--they were designated high priority--and there were a number of CEPA toxics that were being managed through voluntary instruments in the form of ARET. A substance would get declared toxic under CEPA and the risk management measure would be to put that under ARET; in other cases there would be a memorandum of understanding developed with an industry association, or with individual companies, and they would commit to take voluntary action on those CEPA toxics.
When I said we were neutral, the policy question of whether a voluntary instrument is better than a regulatory instrument is something we avoided. We said that's a policy choice governments can make. However, we did feel that if you're going to use voluntary instruments to manage high-priority toxic substances--substances that otherwise have the potential to create risk for people and the environment--then make sure those voluntary instruments are robust: make sure they have the characteristics of a regulatory approach without being a regulation.