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The latest alert from the Pesticide Action Network, dealing with the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010:
The stakes are high. Decisions made in Washington this week will determine the toxic chemical load carried by this generation's children and grandchildren.
The Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 is moving through Congress right now, and it could turn our 30-year-old "innocent until proven guilty" approach to toxic chemicals on its head. The proposed bill is a huge step forward - but it's not yet strong enough.
Act Now! We need to help Congress get it right. Call your Representative today with this simple message: Persistent chemicals have got to go.
To protect future generations, the Safe Chemicals Act must direct EPA to take swift action on persistent, bioaccumulative toxic chemicals (PBTs). These chemicals can last for years in the environment and build up in our bodies over time.
PBTs have been linked to cancer, infertility, diabetes and many other chronic diseases. Most can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Many of these chemicals - including many pesticides - have already been banned by other countries around the world.
Call today. Policymakers can no longer ignore the mounting evidence of the dangers of our daily exposure to toxic chemicals, and the importance of eliminating PBTs.
Thank you for taking action to build a healthier future.
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The latest alert from the Pesticide Action Network, dealing with the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010:
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3 comments:
The potential for TSCA reform is quite exciting, but it should be done in a way that doesn’t sacrifice millions of animals (for toxicity testing) in the name of better protection for human health and the environment. The revised bill needs to mandate and create market incentives to use nonanimal methods and tests.
I agree that we should use the latest science to assess chemicals. Instead of poisoning animals and attempting to apply that data to humans — which hasn’t worked out so far — we need to make sure a reformed TSCA relies on modern human cell and computer-based methods that provide more accurate data on how a chemical acts on cells and what the impact on human health may be.
Anonymous,
Thanks for your comment. I've never heard of computer-based methods. Sounds interesting; what do they entail?
Dear Chef Rob,
I just now saw that you responded - sorry for my delay. Computer based models or QSAR's (quantitative structure-activity relationship's) is the process by which chemical structure is quantitatively correlated with a well defined process, such as biological activity or chemical reactivity.
For example, biological activity can be expressed quantitatively as in the concentration of a substance required to give a certain biological response. Additionally, when physicochemical properties or structures are expressed by numbers, one can form a mathematical relationship, or quantitative structure-activity relationship, between the two. The mathematical expression can then be used to predict the biological response of other chemical structures.
Similarly, QSAR consists of computer simulations for animal tests which capture the science of toxicology enough to mimic the results of reference animal tests without using animal exposures. Many QSAR methods have already been used by the U.S. EPA for more than a decade.
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