New Bill To Let Federal Health Researchers Ban Certain Chemicals

A bill that U.S. Rep. Jim Moran and U.S. Sen. John Kerry are expected to introduce this month would empower Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and a panel of experts selected by the director, to bar 10 endocrine disrupting synthetic chemicals from commerce each year by categorizing them as being of high concern. Those chemicals would become unlawful to use 24 months after receiving that designation.

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences / National Institutes of Health / Department of Health and Human Services

Called the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exposure Elimination Act of 2011, the bill has a self-executing statute which would automatically outlaw the chemical or class of chemicals deemed by the NIEHS of “high concern” and would require each regulatory agency to take action to prohibit the chemical.

It represents a dramatic change in approach to regulating chemicals and points both to the frustrations many have with the glacial pace of regulatory agencies and to the mounting scientific evidence available to scientists at the National Institutes of Health indicting endocrine-disrupting chemicals in some of the developed world's gravest health problems.

The chemicals, which can be either naturally occurring or artificial, are found in everyday products like detergents, flame retardants, foods and cosmetics. Researchers have found they interfere with the function of hormones and could adversely affect human health.

Ten may be a small fraction of synthetic hormone disrupters to restrict, given the tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals in commerce today, but MERI director Dr. Susan Shaw, who recently testified in response to the Governor’s proposed roll-back of environmental laws regulating toxic chemicals in Maine, calls the bill’s new approach to preventing harm from toxic chemicals “revolutionary.”

Rising rates of autism spectrum disorders, infertility, ADHD, learning disabilities and obesity have been reported in four successive generations of children since manmade chemicals burgeoned after WWII. Estrogen- and testosterone-mimicking chemicals are also being studied in connection with markedly higher rates of diabetes, neurological damage, and other disorders.

Hormone mimicking chemicals, such as the drug DES that resulted in higher rates of cancer and infertility in children of mothers who took it in pregnancy, can also cause “gender bending” effects. These include “bizarre” reproductive problems seen in many wildlife populations, including intersex fish and, before DDT use diminished, plummeting bald eagles populations.

The fate of the legislation, though, is far from certain. It will have to make its way through committee in both the Republican-controlled House and the Senate, where Democrats have a small majority. The bill will face stiff lobbying by the chemical industry. Itspredecessor, the Endocrine Disruption Prevention Act of 2009, never made it out of committee.

According to Frederick vom Saal, of the Endocrine Society, “BPA is a good example of a situation where there’s this huge disconnect between literally hundreds of and hundreds of studies done both by people in the government and in the academic side and then a small number of studies done by corporations where 100% of the corporate studies say this chemical is safe.”

vom Saal says that's based on junk science, reminiscent of how the tobacco industry defended smoking cigarettes.

"We are almost like a third world country when it comes to regulating chemicals," he said. "It's very difficult for people interested in the public's health to understand how does this become a political, partisan, issue when people on both sides have family that are showing diseases related to these chemicals. What is going on here?"

See full story in Sanjay Gupta’s CNN article
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