Newly Proposed Legislation for Safer Chemicals
In a recent study of 2,400 Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found chemicals — a whopping 212 in all — in the blood and urine of each individual tested.
No one knows exactly what those chemicals do to the human body, to the genetic makeup of humans, or, more disturbingly, to newborn babies, though there is mounting evidence that most synthetic chemicals are estrogenic hormone disruptors, and that many are cumulative carcinogenics.
Perhaps more shocking is the fact that of the 82,000 industrial chemicals registered for use in the U.S., less than 500 have been evaluated for human safety by the EPA. Why? Because under the 1976 federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), industrial chemicals are presumed safe unless proven otherwise, and the government shoulders the entire burden of proving a substance unsafe before it can be banned from usage.
Well, actually no, the government and consumers who use products containing synthetic chemicals shoulder the burden of proving the effects of those untested-for-safety chemicals.
That might change. Newly proposed legislation by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) would reverse the burden of proof. If passed, the Safe Chemicals Act would force industry to prove chemicals safe before using them in products or releasing them into the environment.
Supporters of this proposed legislation hope that it will empower EPA to take the worst offenders off the market quickly and would require regulators to determine the aggregate effect of exposure to a given compound from a variety of sources.
As expected, the chemical industry will strongly oppose this legislation and mobilize any means (legal, political, social) and any amount of money (into research, advertising, propaganda) in order to block it.
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