Passage of the Chemical Safety Bill Is a Murky Milestone for Children’s Health

By Ansje Miller, Center for Environmental Health
Following the recent passage of the chemical safety bill (The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which passed the Senate on June 7), President Obama has signed the first major update to an environmental health law in decades. The bill is being touted as a milestone in our country's environmental history.
While health advocacy efforts won important victories like safeguarding California's Prop 65 (more below), unfortunately the bill falls short of rules our children and families need for protection from chemicals that can cause cancer, birth defects and other serious illnesses.
To be sure there are some small steps towards progress in the bill. For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be required to assess chemicals and decide if they are safe, based solely on human health and environmental effects. The bill gives the agency enforceable targets and deadlines for the pace of chemical assessments. EPA must also take into account those most vulnerable to chemical exposures, like children or those who live near chemical polluters, when developing new chemical regulations.
But the bill signed by the president contains weak provisions even within these positive steps. While the pace of chemical review is prescribed, the prescription falls woefully short for dealing with many of the most risky chemicals. There are more than 80,000 chemicals on the market and EPA has stated that at least 1,000 of these are of enough concern that they should quickly be reviewed. So it is shocking that the bill calls on the agency to review just 20 chemicals per year. Given that the bill allows EPA to take as long as seven years per review—and given the agency's long history of missing deadlines (e.g., see here and here and here), we can expect that most of these chemicals will remain untested for decades.
The law has other troubling provisions as well. EPA cannot bar imports of products, including toys and other children's products, containing harmful chemicals unless the agency first finds that the product will likely expose consumers to health risks (since companies are not required to disclose their products' chemical contents, the agency apparently must make this judgment by clairvoyance). This loophole for toxic imported products is actually a major step backwards from current law.
Furthermore, states that have been successfully protecting children and families from harmful chemicals in the absence of federal rules now face new barriers to providing urgently needed protection. State laws have led to national action against products like baby bottles with BPA and children's products with toxic flame retardants, but now such state actions may be less likely.
Still, thanks to advocacy by the Center for Environmental Health and other health groups, the final bill includes leeway for some state actions and most importantly, the law protects a vital California law that for decades has stopped nationwide sales of hundreds of dangerous products.
This law, known as Prop 65, will continue to be fully enforceable. This matters because under Prop 65, companies have been forced to end their use of arsenic-based wood playground equipment, shampoo containing cancer-causing chemicals, lead-containing materials in baby bibs, children's jewelry and lunchboxes and harmful chemicals used in many other products.
While the details of how EPA will implement the new law remain murky, now is the time to remain vigilant. We must monitor EPA's enforcement and pressure state lawmakers to act. Now more than ever, it's important for all of us to carefully read the labels, to hold companies accountable for using risky chemicals, to send letters and call our elected officials and federal and state regulators and talk to our friends and families about how to protect our health from toxic chemicals.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Interactive Map Shows How 6,500 Factory Farms Put North Carolinians at Risk
3 Things You Should Know About the Most Important Environmental Law Passed in Decades
These 16,000 Foods May Contain the Hormone-Disrupting Chemical BPA
Monsanto Issued Two GMO Permits Despite Objection From 5 Million Nigerians
By Brett Wilkins
One hundred seconds to midnight. That's how close humanity is to the apocalypse, and it's as close as the world has ever been, according to Wednesday's annual announcement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that has been running its "Doomsday Clock" since the early years of the nuclear age in 1947.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
North Atlantic right whales are in serious trouble, but there is hope. A total of 14 new calves of the extremely endangered species have been spotted this winter between Florida and North Carolina.
- Scientists Discover New Population of Endangered Blue Whales ... ›
- Endangered Blue Whales Make 'Unprecedented' Comeback to ... ›
- Endangered North Atlantic Right Whale Calves Spotted Off Coast ... ›
- Only 366 Endangered Right Whales Are Alive: New NOAA Report ... ›
Trending
By Yoram Vodovotz and Michael Parkinson
The majority of Americans are stressed, sleep-deprived and overweight and suffer from largely preventable lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. Being overweight or obese contributes to the 50% of adults who suffer high blood pressure, 10% with diabetes and additional 35% with pre-diabetes. And the costs are unaffordable and growing. About 90% of the nearly $4 trillion Americans spend annually for health care in the U.S. is for chronic diseases and mental health conditions. But there are new lifestyle "medicines" that are free that doctors could be prescribing for all their patients.
Use the Healthy Eating Plate as an evidence-based guide for creating healthy, balanced meals. ©2011, Harvard University, CC BY-NC
Taking an unconventional approach to conduct the largest-ever poll on climate change, the United Nations' Development Program and the University of Oxford surveyed 1.2 million people across 50 countries from October to December of 2020 through ads distributed in mobile gaming apps.
- Guardian/Vice Poll Finds Most 2020 Voters Favor Climate Action ... ›
- Climate Change Seen as Top Threat in Global Survey - EcoWatch ›
- The U.S. Has More Climate Deniers Than Any Other Wealthy Nation ... ›
By Tara Lohan
Fall used to be the time when millions of monarch butterflies in North America would journey upwards of 2,000 miles to warmer winter habitat.
A monarch butterfly caterpillar feeds on common milkweed on Poplar Island in Maryland. Photo: Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program, (CC BY-NC 2.0)