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State-controlled chemistry, which products restrict by state?

The biggest restrictions are around high-volume peroxide developers, ammonia-based permanent color, certain sanitizing chemicals, and some bleach products. The state matrix varies:

  • California, Prop 65 disclosure required on most professional-only chemistry. Some restrictions on high-volume peroxide (40 vol+) sales. Hazardous-material shipping rules.
  • New York, NYC has additional rules on certain salon chemicals beyond NYS rules.
  • Florida, Texas, Illinois, restrict certain bleach + chemical relaxer sales to verified salons only (must have license on file before shipping).
  • Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, hazmat shipping restrictions on certain volume thresholds.
  • Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, air-shipping restrictions on flammable / aerosol salon chemicals (hairspray, certain sanitizers).

Architecture: state chemistry matrix as a Magento product attribute (e.g. chemistry_class: standard, license_required, territory_restricted, hazmat_restricted) + ship-to-state validation rule at checkout. Adds a checkout-time block with a clear “not available to ship to <state>” message rather than failing silently.

Updated quarterly. State board chemistry rules change 1-3x a year per state; I keep a tracker and re-audit the matrix every quarter on retainer clients. Brands also notify when MAP / authorized-dealer chemistry rules change, those go into the same matrix.

Bonus: Prop 65 disclosure auto-injection on CA-shipping orders. The disclosure language is a Magento CMS block that fires on cart when the ship-to state = CA and any cart item has the Prop 65 attribute flagged.

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