Safe Chemicals Act Hearing Builds Momentum for Reform

“The true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated.”
The President’s Cancer Panel, May 2010

At MERI we have long been concerned at the lack of protection for consumers from the thousands of chemicals that we are all unknowingly exposed to. On November 17th a milestone was reached in the effort to change this through reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). After two readings in the U.S. House of Representatives, the proposed Safe Chemicals Act S847 had its first hearing with the Senate Committee for Government and Public Works, Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health.

When TSCA was passed in 1976, 60,000 chemicals were grandfathered in without any toxicity information. Thirty-five years later, testing is still not required for new chemicals put into consumer products. While rates of diseases linked to chemical exposure are on the rise, the federal system that is designed to protect us is failing. Under current policy, TSCA does not give the U.S. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adequate power to identify and regulate dangerous chemicals. The EPA can only call for safety testing after evidence surfaces demonstrating a chemical to be dangerous. As a result, the EPA has been able to require testing for only 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals currently registered in the United States, and to ban only five dangerous substances.

“The average American has more than 200 industrial chemicals in their body, including dozens linked to cancer and other health problems. The shocking truth is that the current law does not require tests to ensure chemicals used in everyday household products are safe,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) when he introduced this bill to give the EPA broad new authorities to target chemicals of concern and to regulate new and existing chemicals. Called the Safe Chemicals Act 2011 (S847), the proposed legislation would require manufacturers to provide information about chemicals before adding them to consumer products instead of presuming substances are safe until proven dangerous.

Passage of the act would mandate that the EPA prioritize chemicals based on risk, expedite action to reduce risk from chemicals of higher concern, further evaluate chemicals that could pose unacceptable risk, provide broad public, access to reliable chemical information, and promote economic innovation, green chemistry and safer alternatives to chemicals of concern.

Sen. Lautenberg has said he hopes to move the bill through committee by the end of the year and is hoping that he can win some Republican support for the measure, something his previous efforts on TSCA reform have lacked.

“This is very important legislation; it affects everyone’s health and is decades overdue,” says Dr. Susan Shaw. “My own blood work revealed that my body contains more than 113 different toxic chemicals, including those that cause cancers, endocrine disruption, reproductive and neurotoxic effects. If everyone had their blood tested, they would find a similar profile. We are all unknowingly contaminated.”

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