Safe Chemicals Act: Reversing the Burden of Proof for Toxic Chemicals

These were among the facts lamented by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair­man of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), chair­man of the Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health, along with other experts and advo­cates dur­ing a hear­ing on Tuesday (July 24, 2012) ahead of Wednesday’s com­mit­tee vote on toxic chem­i­cal reform. The pro­posed Safe Chemicals Act, first intro­duced by Sen. Lautenberg in 2005, would replace the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976 to essen­tially reverse the bur­den of proof on chem­i­cal safety.

“I would bet if we went out­side and asked any­one walk­ing by if they thought that chem­i­cal com­pa­nies have to do tests and prove a chem­i­cal is safe before it is used, they would say, ‘Of course,’” Boxer said dur­ing the hear­ing. “Under the law cur­rently, the EPA has to prove it is unsafe.”

As Boxer and other speak­ers noted, this out­dated reg­u­la­tory frame­work dif­fers sig­nif­i­cantly from laws in the European Union, where chem­i­cals includ­ing flame retar­dants must be tested and proven safe before they are placed on store shelves. Studies have found that far more chem­i­cal pol­lu­tants—impli­cated in every­thing from obe­sity and infer­til­ity, to autism and asthma—course through the blood of Americans than Europeans.

Nevertheless, the bur­den is expected to remain on the EPA at least through this year due to a strong par­ti­san split over strength­en­ing chem­i­cal reform—a dynamic evi­dent dur­ing the hear­ing. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that he would oppose the act “as it stands now.” He also defended rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fire retar­dent indus­try as it faced an onslaught of crit­i­cism dur­ing the hear­ing, cit­ing how “chem­istry is essen­tial to our econ­omy” and that flame retar­dants “reduce injuries and deaths.” Lautenberg high­lighted a recent Chicago Tribune series, which he said exposed “how some in the chem­i­cal indus­try have used dirty tricks and junk sci­ence to drive a pub­lic mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign that keeps dan­ger­ous flame retar­dants in our homes, even when those chem­i­cals don’t do what they are sup­posed to: pre­vent fires.”

Anne Brock, a mother of two young girls in Knoxville, Tenn., said she feels strongly that kids should be more impor­tant than pol­i­tics or another buck for a chem­i­cal com­pany. “I would like our lead­ers to rise above par­ti­san­ship and do what’s morally right, which is to look out for the health and well­be­ing of chil­dren,” said Brock, who writes a blog on green liv­ing.

Brock noted that she does every­thing in her power to give her kids a healthy future. However, as she has learned, what a par­ent can do may not be enough when prod­uct labels don’t list every chem­i­cal ingre­di­ent, or when a chemical’s safety remains untested. In order to uncover what chem­i­cals were trig­ger­ing rashes and breath­ing trou­bles in her daugh­ters, for exam­ple, Brock said she spent a long time “play­ing detec­tive” with what they were eat­ing and apply­ing to their hair and skin.

“I have yet to speak to one par­ent who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to pro­tect our chil­dren by mak­ing sure what we put on their bod­ies and in our homes is safe,” said Brock. “Why, when the sci­ence is already there to give us some pretty strong clues, are we not doing more to help our fam­i­lies live longer and health­ier lives?”

Much of the knowl­edge about the dan­gers of man­made chem­i­cals has been around for decades. As Huffington mag­a­zine reported this week, Rachel Carson antic­i­pated many of today’s toxic trou­bles 50 years ago.

“Like the con­stant drip­ping of water that in turn wears away the hard­est stone,” she wrote in her 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” “this birth-to-death con­tact with dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals may in the end prove disastrous.”

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at HuffingtonPost.com.