Last month, Senator Gillibrand announced her support of the Safe Chemicals act:

More than 84,000 chemicals are currently listed on the EPA’s database, many of which are used regularly in consumer products, but there are three classes in particular that have been found to cause hormone disruption and reproductive deformities when children are exposed in-utero and at young ages. The three major classes of chemicals which children are directly exposed are:

1. phthalates, found in soft plastic products like teething rings, balls, and plastic dolls;
2. BPA, found in hard plastic toys, such as action figures, electronics, and playmobil toysets; and
3. flame retardants found in children’s pajamas and bedding.

….

Senator Gillibrand is cosponsoring the Safe Chemicals Act, legislation introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), which requires chemical companies to demonstrate the safety of industrial chemicals and the EPA to evaluate safety based on the best available science. Specifically, the legislation would:

Require chemical companies to develop and submit safety testing data for each chemical they produce. EPA would have the authority to require any additional data needed to make a safety determination before a new chemical is introduced into commerce. The submission of this data is not currently required by TSCA prior to commercialization, and can only be requested by the EPA once they have reason to believe that a chemical poses a risk to the population.
Require EPA to prioritize existing chemicals for testing based on risk into one of three classes: immediate risk management, safety standard determination, no immediate action to facilitate a risk-based approach for analyzing the approximately 84,000 chemicals currently in the EPA’s database.
Allow the EPA Administrator to issue orders or initiate judicial proceedings to protect the public from chemicals that may “present an imminent and substantial endangerment to health or the environment.”
Provide the public, market and worker access to reliable chemical information by publishing a database housing chemical information and decisions made by EPA about chemicals.
Establish a Children’s Environmental Health Research Program, which requires the EPA to establish an advisory board on children’s health as it relates to toxic chemicals, provides grants to support research into children’s vulnerability to industrial chemicals.
Incentivize safe alternatives by establishing a research grant program targeted at priority hazardous chemicals for which alternatives do not presently exist.

I’ve written before about my concerns about pthaltes and other toxic chemicals found in cosmetics and every day products. I applaud Senator Gillibrand and Senator Lautenberg for their work on this issue. If you live in New York or New Jersey, send them a call, email, or even a tweet or facebook message to thank them for their job well done.

Otherwise, you can contact your Senator and Congressional Representative through the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics by clicking this link.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.