Editorial Policy: Independence, Sources and Corrections in 10 Rules

By PlasticAdditives.net Editorial Team. This page states the rules. Which sources they apply to is set out in our sourcing standards.

Policy version 1.1, published 24 September 2026, last reviewed 25 September 2026. Changes to this policy are listed at the end of the page.

PlasticAdditives.net follows 10 editorial rules, and the three that matter most to a reader checking a number are these: no placement on this site can be bought, every dosage and every limit carries a source and a date, and anything we could not verify is labelled as unverified instead of being written as fact. So who pays for the site, and what can that money not buy?

In order, the ten rules cover independence, no paid rankings, primary sources first, a source and date for every number, labelled uncertainty, disclosed conflicts between sources, no invented expertise, supplier-neutral language, public corrections, and scope discipline.

Table T1. The 10 rules at a glance.

What This Editorial Policy Covers#

This policy applies to every page on PlasticAdditives.net, including the family hubs, the substance profiles, the regulation and testing pages, the calculators, the supplier directory and the price guides. Pages publish on a rolling schedule, and a page carries these ten rules from the day it publishes, including the root reference on plastic additives.

Independence: Who Pays for PlasticAdditives.net and Who Does Not#

PlasticAdditives.net earns money from display advertising, from quote requests that buyers send to suppliers through the supplier finder, and from gated selection guides; it does not sell content, placement or review outcomes. A paid featured listing planned for the supplier directory is a labelled block beside a table, and never changes who appears inside it or in what order: that separation is editorial independence. Which revenue line touches what a page says? None. Who runs the site is answered on about PlasticAdditives.net.

Advertising, RFQ leads and supplier listings#

Display advertising on this site is labelled as advertising, never placed above the main content of a page, and sold without reference to what the page says. An advertiser buys a position, not influence, and sees no draft before it publishes.

A buyer's request for a quote goes to several suppliers at once through the plastic additive supplier finder; the site is paid for the introduction, not for the answer given or whether the supplier wins the business.

What a supplier cannot buy#

Five things on PlasticAdditives.net are not for sale, starting with inclusion in any table: a substance appears in a comparison because it belongs there on the evidence, not because its maker paid.

• Inclusion in a substance, family or comparison table
• Position or order within any table, list or directory
• Removal or softening of a regulatory status, restriction date or hazard classification
• A dosage, performance or price figure that no source supports
• The byline, a review statement or any implication that a supplier checked a page

The same rule governs every profile in the plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers directory: a listing carries no purchased rank.

How a supplier may and may not be mentioned#

A supplier is named on this site for one of three reasons: it makes or sells the substance the page is about, its technical data sheet is the source of a value on the page, or it appears in a directory of the companies active in that additive category. In each case the mention is editorial, and the company has no say over it.

A supplier is never named as an endorsement, never described as recommended, preferred or approved by this site, and never quoted for a regulatory status. A grade is named with the company that makes it whenever a figure comes from that company's data sheet, so a reader can see whose number it is. A company that believes an entry about it is wrong uses the same correction route as any other reader.

Which Sources We Accept, and in Which Order#

Sources on PlasticAdditives.net are ranked in three tiers, and a higher tier always overrides a lower one: an official text beats a standard, a standard beats a data sheet, and a data sheet beats a market report. The authorities in each tier, and what we take from each one, are listed under sources and standards we cite.

Table T2. Source hierarchy.

A tier 3 source is never used for a regulatory value, and a tier 2 source is never used to override the instrument in force.

Every instrument cited on this site is indexed under plastic additive regulations.

Tier 1: regulations, official journals and registers#

A regulatory statement on this site is taken from the binding text, not a summary: a restriction comes from the Official Journal entry, an FDA clearance from the eCFR section, a Candidate List date from ECHA. When a newer official source disagrees with what is published here, the official value publishes and the page is corrected.

Tier 2: standards bodies, peer-reviewed research and handbooks#

A test standard is cited with its current edition, because the edition changes what the number means: ASTM D1003-21 for haze, ISO 11357-6:2018 for oxidative induction time. Peer-reviewed research is cited with the researcher's name, institution and year in the sentence, never as a numbered footnote, and a reference handbook is cited with its edition and year.

Tier 3: manufacturer datasheets, association data and trade press#

A figure from a manufacturer data sheet publishes as that manufacturer's figure for that grade, not as a property of the additive class. A market figure publishes only as a range with the analyst and year, never as a single unsourced number.

Sources we do not use#

Five kinds of source are not used on PlasticAdditives.net, starting with the most common one on the open web: another website's summary of a regulation. The excluded types are:

• Another website's restatement of a regulation, in place of the text itself
• Marketing claims with no underlying data
• "Top 10" listicles and aggregator pages
• A secondary source where the primary text is available
• An undated figure of any kind

An encyclopedia entry, including Wikipedia, is used only as a pointer to a primary source, except where a page names it in the sentence as the source of a property or market-share figure that no better source gives.

How We Write a Regulatory Fact: Instrument, Article, Limit and Date#

Every regulatory statement on this site carries four elements: the instrument, the article or entry number, the limit or requirement, and the date it applies from. Omitting any one turns a checkable fact into an unverifiable claim, so "FDA approved" or "banned in Europe" never appear alone.

"Lead stabilizers are banned in Europe" omits the threshold, material, instrument and date, and is wrong for recovered rigid PVC, which carries a derogation to 1.5 % until 28 May 2033. A migration limit carries its FCM number and the version of EU 10/2011 it comes from.

How Conflicting Sources Are Resolved#

When two sources disagree, the primary text wins: the instrument in force outranks a regulator's summary, a regulator's summary outranks a standards body's commentary, and any of those outranks a supplier document or a trade report. A page never averages two conflicting values, and never picks the more convenient one.

Three cases cover almost every disagreement:

1. A regulatory value conflicts with a secondary restatement of it. The instrument publishes, and the restatement is not cited.
2. A sourced figure conflicts with an unsourced one. The sourced figure publishes, with its source named in the sentence.
3. Two credible sources genuinely differ because they measure different things. Both publish, each with its source and its basis, for example a share-by-weight table that puts plasticizers ahead of fillers alongside Ceresana's 2023 tonnage estimate that puts fillers above plasticizers, because analysts count fillers and reinforcements differently.

What unverified means#

An unverified item is a value found in a secondary source that could not be confirmed against the authority for it, and it is labelled as unverified instead of printed as fact. Each one names what could not be confirmed, and stays out of every table, calculator and comparison until it is resolved. Publishing the gap is the point: a reader building a specification needs to know which values are settled and which are not.

What We Do Not Publish: Unsourced Prices, Best-Product Claims and Invented Expertise#

Four kinds of statement never appear on PlasticAdditives.net, and the first is the one a buyer most wants: a price number we cannot source.

• A price figure without a source and a date
• A "best" or "safest" product claim without a stated criterion and a number
• A health or safety conclusion that goes beyond what the cited study or authority states
• An author, credential, laboratory or review persona that does not exist

This is why plastic additive prices describe drivers and relative levels where a sourced figure is missing, and every byline reads "PlasticAdditives.net Editorial Team" instead of a fictional chemist.

Authorship and Review#

Every page is bylined to the PlasticAdditives.net Editorial Team, and the site claims no review it has not performed: no page says that a chemist, an engineer, a laboratory or an advisory board wrote, checked or approved it, because none did. What the site does claim is checkable on the page itself: each value names the source it came from, each regulatory statement names its instrument and date, and anything that could not be confirmed is labelled as unverified.

The content is compiled from expert sources rather than written from expert opinion, and those sources are named: standards bodies, regulators and official texts, peer-reviewed literature, reference handbooks and manufacturer technical data. Their authority belongs to them, not to us, which is why they are named in the sentence that uses them.

Corrections: How to Report an Error and What Happens Next#

If a number on this site is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source it claims to come from: a report that holds up is corrected on the page, dated, and described in one line so a reader can see what changed. This corrections policy does not yet commit to a fixed number of working days; a report is verified as soon as the editorial team can complete it.

How to report an error#

Report an error in four steps; a more precise source publishes a faster correction.

1. Name the page URL and quote the exact sentence that is wrong
2. State the value believed to be correct
3. Give the source, ideally the primary text, with its article, entry or edition number
4. Send the report through the correction route described on About PlasticAdditives.net

A correction is never limited to the page that was reported: every other page that stated the same wrong value is corrected at the same time.

Correction, update and retraction#

Three things can happen to a published statement: a correction, when it was wrong; an update, when the world changed; and a retraction, when it cannot be supported. The table states the trigger, what changes and what the reader sees.

Table T3. What happens to a statement.

How Often Pages Are Reviewed: Regulatory News and Scheduled Updates#

Every page carries a last-reviewed date, and a page is reviewed when the thing it cites changes, not on a fixed calendar: the SVHC Candidate List updates twice a year, in January and June, and every page naming a listed additive is checked within that cycle. A new POPs listing, an FDA or EPA action, or a test-standard edition triggers the same review.

Price and market figures are reviewed on a separate cycle, with no fixed interval yet established. Each trigger is reported in plastic additives news: regulations.

Scope: Which Plastic Additives This Policy Applies To#

This site covers additives used in plastics: thermoplastics, thermosets used as plastics, compounds and masterbatch, and nothing else. A chemical gets a profile among the plastic additive substance profiles only if it is used in a plastic; a substance whose only documented use lies elsewhere is noted as out of scope instead.

A chemical used in plastics and elsewhere is covered here for its plastics use only, with other uses named below the contextual border. Concrete admixtures, paints, coatings, adhesives, fuel and lubricating-oil additives, food and feed additives, cosmetics, textile finishing, paper chemicals and pure rubber chemistry are all out of scope.

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How This Policy Differs from a Supplier or Marketplace Page#

A manufacturer's additive page compares the grades that manufacturer sells, and a marketplace orders suppliers by what they pay; this site compares every grade it can document, which is why the rules above exist. A comparison table here includes every grade with a source behind it, whichever company makes it, and links to the suppliers that sell it.

How we cover toxic additives and health claims#

A statement that an additive is toxic is written as the classification a named authority gave it, with the date, never as a general judgement about a product. This site does not give consumer safety advice or call a specific product safe or unsafe; the classifications behind the term toxic plastic additives are listed with their authorities and dates in that section.

The glossary, units and abbreviations we standardise#

A concentration on this site always states what it is a percentage of, because wt%, phr and ppm are three different numbers for the same additive. An abbreviation is expanded on first use, and a trade name is always paired with the chemical name and CAS number, both defined in the plastic additives glossary.

Complaints, right of reply and conflicts of interest#

A company named on this site can correct a fact about itself through the same route as any other reader, and the correction is judged on its source, not its sender. A commercial relationship never changes what a page says, and such a page states that relationship in plain words.

Citing PlasticAdditives.net#

Cite a page by title, URL and last-reviewed date, plus the primary source named in the sentence when a value enters a specification.

Changes to this policy#

This policy carries a version number, and every change is listed below with its date. A change weakening any commitment in Table T1 is stated here in plain words, not folded into a routine update.