"Many Americans assume that the chemicals in their shampoos, detergents and
other consumer products have been thoroughly tested and proved to be safe.
"This assumption is wrong.
"Unlike pharmaceuticals or pesticides, industrial
chemicals do not have to be tested before they are put on the market. Under the
law regulating chemicals, producers are only rarely required to provide the
federal government with the information necessary to assess safety.
"Regulators, doctors, environmentalists and the chemical
industry agree that the country’s main chemical safety law, the Toxic
Substances Control Act, needs fixing. It is the only major environmental
statute whose core provisions have not been reauthorized or substantively
updated since its adoption in the 1970s. They do not agree, however, on who
should have to prove that a chemical is safe.
"Currently this burden rests almost entirely on the
federal government. Companies have to alert the Environmental Protection Agency
before manufacturing or importing new chemicals. But then it is the E.P.A.’s
job to review academic or industry data, or use computer modeling, to determine
whether a new chemical poses risks. Companies are not required to provide any
safety data when they notify the agency about a new chemical, and they rarely
do it voluntarily, although the E.P.A. can later request data if it can show
there is a potential risk. If the E.P.A. does not take steps to block the new
chemical within 90 days or suspend review until a company provides any
requested data, the chemical is by default given a green light.
"The law puts federal authorities in a bind. 'It’s the
worst kind of Catch-22,' said Dr. Richard Denison,
senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. 'Under this law, the E.P.A.
can’t even require testing to determine whether a risk exists without first
showing a risk is likely.'”
"As a result, the overwhelming majority of chemicals in
use today have never been independently tested for safety.
"In its history, the E.P.A. has mandated safety testing
for only a small percentage of the 85,000 industrial chemicals available for
use today. And once chemicals are in use, the burden on the E.P.A. is so high
that it has succeeded in banning or restricting only five substances, and often
only in specific applications: polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, hexavalent
chromium, asbestos and chlorofluorocarbons.
"Part of the growing pressure to update federal rules on
chemical safety comes from advances in the science of biomonitoring, which
tells us more about the chemicals to which we are exposed daily, like the
bisphenol A (BPA) in can linings and hard plastics, the flame retardants in
couches, the stain-resistant coatings on textiles and the nonylphenols in
detergents, shampoos and paints. Hazardous chemicals have become so ubiquitous
that scientists now talk about babies being born pre-polluted, sometimes with
hundreds of synthetic chemicals showing up in their blood."
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I satisfy my sweet tooth with dark chocolate, maple syrup, raw honey and molasses, but these stand-alones don't work for everyone.
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