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Whither plastics and whither humanity?
Eco-nomics, the new kind of economics
Please don't disrupt my endocrines!
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Toxins in our Kids' Foods: Where is the FDA?
Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Fluoride in Your Water: How much is too much?
Borax: Not the Green Alternative It's Cracked Up to Be
Test Your Knowledge of Cosmetics Safety: 8 Myths Debunked
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
EWG on TV
Cutting the Pork from U.S. Farm Bill
Sunscreen safety & DC drinking water
Perchlorate in people, kids' personal care products & plastics, and sunscreen
BPA in baby formula & safe cosmetics
What can I do about fluoride in my water?
What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
Are stainless steel water bottles safe?
Is mineral-based makeup safer?
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Monthly Archive
Are we using the best available science to prevent breast cancer?
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and as we pause to think about the consequences of breast cancer for ourselves and our families, a question presents itself - how can we best use the scientific knowledge collected over decades of research to treat breast cancer and reduce its incidence? Based on all that we have learned in recent years, have we as a society taken all possible steps to prevent breast cancer?
Breast cancer is now the second most common cancer among American women. It is outranked only by skin cancer. According the National Cancer Institute an estimated 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers arise from inherited gene mutations. The vast majority of women diagnosed with the disease are not thought to have significant family histories of the disease. Increasingly, lifetime exposures to toxic chemicals in our food, water, the environment and even in cosmetics are thought to play a role in the development of breast cancer.
In 2007, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Silent Spring Institute released the most comprehensive review to date of scientific research on environmental factors that may increase breast cancer risk. This research revealed that that among the 216 compounds that cause breast tumors in animals:
- 73 have been present in consumer products or as contaminants in food;
- 35 are air pollutants;
- 25 have been associated with occupational exposures affecting more than 5,000 women a year;
- 29 are produced in the United States in large amounts, often exceeding 1 million pounds per year.
Although the discussion of the scientific evidence linking cancer to environmental chemical exposures has been an area of contention for the past three decades, we do know that preventing exposure to carcinogens prevents the disease. Moreover, known and suspected chemical carcinogens are only a part of the story. Hormone-mimicking or endocrine disrupting compounds are suspected of contributing to increased breast cancer incidence as well as precocious puberty in the United States. Early-life exposure to these noxious chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, may increase the risk of breast cancer later in life. Many pesticides, industrial chemicals, plastics ingredients and food packaging materials are known to have endocrine-disrupting properties.
Bisphenol A, which has been in the news lately as an especially serious health hazard for babies fed canned infant formula, is also suspected to play a role in breast cancer because of BPA's structural similarities to the cancer-promoting compound DES (diethylstilbestrol). A search of the U.S. National Library of Medicine database reveals more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications linking BPA to an increased risk of developing breast cancer or to forms of the disease that are particularly difficult to treat. For example, BPA induces a profile of tumor aggressiveness in high-risk cells from breast cancer patients. Fetal exposure to BPA induces mammary gland ductal hyperplasias and carcinoma in situ in animal studies.
BPA may also reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments, scientists with the Department of Cancer and Cell Biology at University of Cincinnati reported in the latest issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
Time has come to adopt a new cancer prevention paradigm so as to limit exposures to avoidable environmental and occupational carcinogens. Many cancer patients, their families, advocates, physicians and researchers have been pointing to this unparalleled opportunity for reducing the incidence of breast cancer. By ridding our environment of chemical contaminants, decreasing the use of pesticides to the extent possible and ensuring that foods, cosmetics, personal care products and children's toys are free of endocrine disruptors such as phthalates and BPA, we can improve the health of our nation and decrease the burden of all cancers.
We know enough about the health effects of synthetic chemicals and persistent environmental pollutants. We know enough about the ravages of cancer. Time has come to act on this knowledge.
Note added November 3, 2008. As many Enviroblog readers already know, last Friday, October 31st, the FDA advisory board accepted critical report on agency's handling of BPA. To read the news story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, click here. To read EWG statement to the FDA's Science Board, click here.
Photo by Gare and Kitty
Don't mess with my milk!
Last week I met one of the co-founders and current director of Make our Milk Safe (aka M.O.M.S.), an inspiring Oakland-based grassroots group that is fighting hard around the country to get toxic chemicals out of breast milk. This group strikes a real chord with me because they are motivated by the outrageous fact that human breast milk is loaded with chemicals. Chemicals that nursing mothers transfer directly into their tiny, new babies. Of course EWG firmly believes that breast milk is still the best milk, despite its contamination.
I can still recall the day when I first learned about this, long before working for EWG. I was nursing my first child, who is now 5. I've rarely been angrier than the moment I read in the New York Times Magazine about Swedish studies showing that PBDE's in human breast milk had doubled every five years since the 1970's (when they had taken samples), and that levels in the U.S. were 10 to 100 times higher than women in Europe and Japan. And to my amazement, no-one appeared to be doing anything about it. How could this first, amazing food of human life be toxic and we weren't marching on Washington? If not that, I wondered, then what?
So when I came across M.O.M.S. recently it was like coming home. Here they were, the mothers marching on Washington, fighting to get toxics out of their milk. Here's how they describe their mission, the reason for their fight:
Let's face it, moms—heck parents in general— are a busy bunch. We shouldn't have to worry about whether the products we buy are safe, but we do. Why? Because there is growing evidence that everyday consumer products we buy for our homes and families are tainted with chemicals that cause birth defects, reproductive, developmental, and behavioral harm, and even cancer. It's an outrage. And we want to do something about it.We are working to build a massive movement of mothers and others who will step out from behind the changing table and speak out against the presence of toxins in our environment, our bodies, and breast milk.
Like EWG, these moms are working from a number of angles to make the world we live in more environmentally healthy. Two approaches that we share are educating consumers and supporting progressive legislation, like the Kid Safe Chemicals Act. They offer some excellent guidance for pregnant and nursing mothers, and of course you can join the MOMSquad if you're ready to make some noise about all this (not the crying baby kind). If nothing else, get on their mailing list so you know what they're up to. And if you're like me and always need a baby gift on hand, their onesie is perfect - it says what I feel so well: Don't mess with my milk!
Ready, Set, No Plastic
I've long known about the whole plastics-in-the-ocean problem but never really been struck by it. Does that ever happen to you? It's happened to me plenty of times, where some issue lurks in the back of my brain somewhere, not getting a whole lot of attention. Then one day, it rises up, out of the dark recesses and is all. I. think. about.
I already avoid certain plastics because I have young kids and try hard to minimize their exposures to toxic chemicals. But this is different, because all plastics are guiltily bobbing around the ocean, gumming up the works of wildlife and ecosystems for miles around. So when I read Olga's post about the great Pacific garbage patch on Enviroblog last week and caught a glimpse of the plastic-filled albatross video on You Tube, I decided to kick it up a notch.
So I did what any very forgetful person would do in such a situation: I taped a sign on our back door, not to be missed by anyone leaving the house (with a wallet, headed to a store, in other words), that reads: Remember the great Pacific garbage patch.
Why? Because I'm gonna go without. For a week. Seven whole days. Not gonna buy one single thing with plastic on it. And yes, that includes my glass milk bottles because the lid is plastic. It includes clothing with that teeny plastic thingy that attaches the price tag (does it have a name??). And it includes the saran wrap on cheese. Eek. And yes, my husband is (somewhat begrudgingly) joining the fun, so he won't be secretly buying what I can't.
Why a week? It's my hope that I can do in a week what I might not be able to sustain for longer, and I want to raise my own consciousness about how prevalent plastic is, where there are alternatives we can embrace. I aim to identify permanent changes that aren't so hard, and a few that are. I know I'll go back to buying my glass bottled milk with the plastic lid, but that's OK. The goal isn't no plastic forever (is it?). I do live in the middle of an American city, after all. I just have this sense that it's really and truly and absolutely everywhere but I'm just not really seeing it.
Check back next Tuesday to see how it went. I expect some easy changes and some challenges, too. I'm finally going to seize that low-hanging fruit: no more plastic grocery bags, disposable coffee cups or bottled water (all preventable), and more bulk food. Some challenges I expect are: no juice smoothies for the kids, no cheese, no yogurt, no tortillas, yikes, the list of plastic-wrapped food is l-o-n-g. One major challenge is that success may well hinge on me having a little forethought, some organization, and some time, none of which are currently my strong suits. Wish me luck.
[Photo courtesy of Beth at Fake Plastic Fish who is an inspiring pro at this plastic-free-lifestyle. That's me in Oakland with her ceramic mug; she brought it for me because I forgot mine. I told you, she's good.]
White House going-out-of-business sale
Whoever takes over the White House is sure to do more for the environment than the current occupants.
Well, it would be hard do less.
In fact, doing nothing would be better than the administration’s current drive to help favored industries lock in their gains by knocking a few more loopholes into already porous regulations.
For example: in 2007, the Environmental Working Group found that rising prices for uranium, gold and other metals had caused some 810 mining claims to be staked within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park and that more than 21,000 claims to mine for uranium, gold and other metals had been filed near national parks and other American treasures. To prevent mining near the Grand Canyon while mining reform legislation is being debated, a Congressional committee invoked a little-known emergency rule that enabled it to take quick action to protect threatened public lands.
But on Oct. 10, the Interior department’s Bureau of Land Management announced a plan to eliminate that rule. The deadline for public comment expires today (Oct. 27), after which BLM can proceed with the paperwork to make the change permanent.
Meanwhile, the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining is taking good care of Big Coal. On Oct. 17, it moved a giant step closer to enacting regulations promoting the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. In 1983, the Reagan administration wrote regulations that barred surface mining companies from dumping piles of debris within 100 feet of mountain streams. Surface miners have targeted those regulations as an impediment to coal production, though many mining operations have simply ignored them. The US Environmental Protection Agency has calculated that mountaintop removal mining has damaged or destroyed at least 400,000 acres of southern Appalachian forests and 1,200 miles of mountain streams since the 1980’s.
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have both pledged to stop mountaintop mining, but it will take months for a new President to put a new team into place and work through the issues, especially with a global economic crisis and two wars on the front burner. In the meantime, the Bush administration’s legacy will be more decapitated mountaintops: the new rule will allow mining operations to dump debris in waters whenever they find it necessary – which, of course, they will, since Appalachia is laced with sparkling springs and streams. Only a few more bureaucratic hurdles remain for the new regulation to go into effect.
On the toxic chemicals front, the story is much the same. On Oct. 20, with no public discussion, the Environmental Protection Agency relaxed safety standards for an antimicrobial agent widely used in cleaning solutions for commercial food preparation facilities and hospitals. The chemical -- alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride, or ADBAC -- is regulated under the federal pesticides law and is suspected of causing asthma and reproductive system damage.
Digging into federal records, Environmental Working Group scientist Rebecca Sutton discovered that the EPA was about to gut the rules on ADBAC, in response to a request from a single disinfectants manufacturer - Edwards-Councilor Co., Inc. of Virginia Beach, VA. Sutton quickly filed an objection. EPA has not responded.
On Oct. 31, the federal Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to hear a key science advisory panel’s recommendations on the toxicity of the plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen linked by dozens of scientific studies to a variety of problems, including cancer, brain and nervous system disruption, behavioral issues, reproductive system damage, cardiovascular disease, obesity and adult onset diabetes. The National Toxicology Program terms the chemical a possible threat to fetuses, infants and young children, and EWG and other health and environmental groups are pressing to remove BPA from food packaging. EWG studies have found that infants are exposed to excessive amounts of the chemical because it leaches into baby formula from can linings and also from polycarbonate baby bottles.
But the FDA, relying on chemical industry studies and advice, has rebuffed all demands for tighter regulations. Friday’s session is unlikely to spur change: the chair of FDA’S so-called BPA subcommittee is a University of Michigan toxicologist currently under an FDA ethics inquiry. The reason: failing to disclose a $5 million gift to the center he directs from a retired businessman who happens to be an outspoken critic of environmental regulation in general and restrictions on BPA in particular.
Whither plastics and whither humanity?
By Nneka Leiba, MPH and Olga Naidenko, PhD
No corner of the planet, however remote, is now free from synthetic chemical contaminants. Especially plastic. Big. Small. In every color. In every shape. Everywhere. We use it and discard it, seldom pausing to think what happens to all the plastic debris tossed on pavements, blown from open landfills and dumped directly into the rivers and off the coast.
Nowhere is this problem as desperate and distressing as in the oceans, which end up as dumps for all the plastic trash the modern world produces. As described by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, non-biodegradable plastic travels over vast distances and accumulates on beaches and in the ocean depths.
In the central Pacific Ocean, circulating currents known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre have gathered tons of plastic into "the great Pacific garbage patch." This human-made island twice the size of the state of Texas, is composed of such large quantities of plastic debris that it outweighs zooplankton, the microscopic backbone of the marine ecosystem, by six to one.
Fish, seabirds, turtles and other marine wildlife often consume plastic debris or become entangled in it, suffering injury as they try to escape or dying in the man-made maze. Ingested plastic may also release harmful toxicants, such as plastic additives and pesticide residues. Many of these chemicals accumulate in the tissues of marine animals and plants and end up in the human food chain.
The International Bottled Water Association defends the amount of waste produced by its industry by pointing out that "bottled water containers make up only 0.3% of the municipal waste stream in the U.S. But in an article published in the October 2008 issue of the journal Environmental Research, Algalita founder Charles Moore, author of pioneering studies on oceanic pollution, reports that that "marine litter is now 60-80% plastic, reaching 90-95% in some areas." The reason, Moore says, is that "between 1970 and 2003, plastics became the fastest growing segment of the US municipal waste stream, increasing nine-fold." Clearly, he argues, much of that non-degradable waste finds its way to blue water.
These numbers are indefensible. That we have allowed a deathly swirl of plastic to kill vital marine life and poison our food supply is a moral failure. Will we tell our children, "Look, this is what our generation has done to the oceans"? For the sake of their future, and, indeed, the future of the planet, we can no longer ignore the plastic plague.
Although there is no instant fix for plastic pollution, there are a number of steps all of us can take to reduce the amount of plastic waste carried to the oceans. In an online publication entitled Plastic Debris from Rivers to Sea, Algalita Research Foundation offers a sensible list of "10 things you can do to conserve your watershed." Environmental activist and founder of Blue Frontier Campaign, David Helvarg, also offers valuable advice in his book 50 Ways to Save the Ocean.
Some of our favorite tips:
- Use your own cloth or recycled grocery bags to carry your purchases.
- Choose paper, glass or biodegradable plastic whenever possible.
- Buy products that are recycled or reused and packaged with minimal plastic.
Photos courtesy Algalita.org. For additional information on ocean plastic pollution, click here
Healthy Home Tips for Parents
Just yesterday I listened to EWG President Ken Cook give a terrific presentation in San Francisco based on the influential cord blood study we did a few years ago. During the Q & A, someone asked a question we hear often: If you could recommend one thing we should all do to improve the environmental health of our families, what would it be?
I'll confess to having wondered the same thing myself. Not surprisingly, it's difficult to nail the one most important thing since for every one of us it's going to be a little different, based on unique exposures, ages of our children, geography, and income, to name but a few. And of course there are many important steps to take if improving the environmental health in your home is seriously on your 'to do' list.
It just so happens that EWG researchers put their heads together not too long ago and created this high-priority list called Healthy Home Tips for Parents. Of course it's not just for parents, but there are some tips specifically for pregnant women and small kids in there, so if that's not you, worry not, it's still a useful guide. Plus, while the steps are all important and effective, they're really not very hard. I'm trying to hit one a week. They don't look so hard, do they?
- Choose better body care products. Just because a label says "gentle" or "natural" doesn't mean it's kid-safe. Look up your products on CosmeticsDatabase.com. Read the ingredients and avoid triclosan, BHA, fragrance, and oxybenzone.
- Go organic & eat fresh foods. Opt for organic fruits and veggies, or use FoodNews.org to find conventionally grown produce with the least pesticides. Choose milk and meat without added growth hormones. Limit canned food and infant formula, as can linings contain bisphenol A (BPA).
- Avoid fire retardants. Choose snug-fitting cotton pajamas for kids, and repair or replace worn out foam items.
- Pick plastics carefully. Some plastics contain BPA, which is linked to cancer. Avoid clear, hard plastic bottles marked with a "7" or "PC" and choose baby bottles made from glass or BPA-free plastic. Don't microwave plastic containers. Stay away from toys marked with a "3" or "PVC." Give your baby a frozen washcloth instead of vinyl teethers.
- Filter your tap water. Use a reverse osmosis system or carbon filter pitcher to reduce your family's exposure to impurities in water, like chlorine and lead. Don't drink bottled water, which isn't necessarily better. Mix infant formula with fluoride-free water.
- Wash those hands. In addition to reducing illness, frequent hand washing will reduce kids' exposure to chemicals. Skip anti-bacterial soaps, since they can be bad for the environment, aren't any better than soap and water, and can contain pesticides that are absorbed through the skin.
- Skip non-stick. When overheated non-stick cookware can emit toxic fumes. Cook with cast iron or stainless steel instead.
- Use a HEPA-filter vacuum. Kids spend lots of time on the floor, and household dust can contain contaminants like lead and fire retardants. HEPA-filter vacuums capture the widest range of particles and get rid of allergens. Leave your shoes at the door so you don't bring more pollutants inside.
- Get your iodine. Use iodized salt, especially while pregnant and nursing, and take iodine-containing prenatal vitamins. Iodine buffers against chemicals like perchlorate, which can disrupt your thyroid system and affect brain development during pregnancy and infancy.
- Use greener cleaners & avoid pesticides. Household cleaners, bug killers, pet treatments, and air fresheners can irritate kids' lungs, especially if your kids have asthma. Investigate less toxic alternatives. Use vinegar in place of bleach, baking soda to scrub your tiles, and hydrogen peroxide to remove stains.
- Eat good fats. Omega-3 fatty acids can offset toxic effects of lead and mercury. They're in fish, eggs, nuts, oils, and produce. Choose low-mercury fish like salmon, tilapia and pollock, rather than high-mercury tuna and swordfish, especially if you're pregnant. Breast milk is the best source of good fats (and other benefits) for babies, and protects them from toxic chemicals.
Like this list? You can download it here.
[Photo courtesy of me. 'Cause that's my girl, Georgia.]
Eco-nomics, the new kind of economics
If you live in Washington DC, as I do, there are two things that you hear about everywhere you turn- the U.S. presidential election and the economic crisis. The first topic will be resolved quickly enough. The second one will be around for a while to come, I'm afraid.
The financial crisis is here to stay for at least some time. However, the economic situation can have an interesting role in putting the price tab on the nature and the nature resources considered free until now.
According to the recent Reuters article:
"Advocates of "eco-nomics" say that valuing "natural capital" could help protect nature from rising human populations, pollution and climate change that do not figure in conventional measures of wealth such as gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national product (GNP)."
The approach of eco-nomics is that sustainability is an essential driver of economic prosperity and that companies should generate business value trough sustainable practices.
Reuters article continues with:
"Under standard economics, nations can boost their GDP -- briefly -- by chopping down all their forests and selling the timber, or by dynamiting coral reefs to catch all the fish. A rethink would stress the value of keeping nature intact."
Rethinking is definitely much needed on the economics of the world. The new approach sounds like an promising start.
Photo by pete4ducks
Please don't disrupt my endocrines!
Unless you've been living under a rock these past few years, or purposefully avoiding the newspaper, you've likely heard the term 'endocrine disruptor.' And it has a serious ring to it, doesn't it? Like when you hear the phrase you get an immediate sense that endocrines should definitely not be disrupted, and a sinking feel that maybe yours aren't safe. And you'd be right on both counts.
What's an endocrine, anyway? First off, it's the endocrine system, not just one lone endocrine (as I once thought). And this is one important system. Why? It produces and manages hormones, that's why. It accomplishes this through a complex system of glands and receptors throughout the body (familiar sounding glands like pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, ovaries, and testicles). Hormones (such as insulin, estrogen, and testosterone) are produced in these glands, travel through the bloodstream, and bind with matching receptors. These hormones control a bunch of important functions in the body, like growth, reproduction, blood pressure, and food utilization, to name but a few.
Now that you know all about the endocrine system, what's a disruptor? So glad you asked! A hormone disruptor is a substance from outside the body (yup, exogenous) that comes right in and acts like a hormone from inside the body (endogenous), thus disrupting a very delicate balance, preventing those endogenous hormones from doing what they do so well: bind with receptors. Check out this animated illustration of it all.
So what's the matter with that? As you saw if you watched the animated illustration, the exogenous hormones hog up receptors that the endogenous ones are supposed to connect with, disrupting the physiological function of the endogenous hormones. In other words, the unnatural, external substances enter the body and prevent our natural hormones from doing their jobs properly. Ugh. This malfunction can potentially interfere with our many hormonally - driven body processes.
Where do the exogenous hormones come from? People come into contact with chemcials that have estrogenic effects all the time - they're called EDCs, or endocrine disrupting chemicals. Some examples may sound very familiar: phthalates, bispheol-A, and PBDEs.
Concerned? So are we. Check out our healthy home tips to minimize exposures - they're easy and effective.
Learn more. And if you want to hear all this straight from EWG, watch
[diagram courtesy of WikiCommons]
Taking pollution personally
Green Goes With Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life And A Cleaner Planet, by Sloan Barnett (306 pp. Atria Books. $19.95)
Reviewed by Ken Cook, President, EWG
They’re out there in the audience in droves wherever my colleagues and I travel to present EWG’s “10 Americans”, our lecture on toxic chemicals and health. Their hands pop up right after the talk, or they crowd around afterwards with questions or comments that commonly begin “I never thought about pollution and the environment very much until. . .”
. . . Until a sister, a wife or a mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Until a severe allergic response to a home cleaning product made it impossible for them to tolerate perfumes or chemical scents of any kind. Until a grandson, healthy, happy and bubbling one day, was cruelly imprisoned by autism the next.
It’s the husband and wife who come up to say bravely that they, too, have tried and tried but cannot conceive a child or carry a baby to term. It’s the teacher who laments the terrible toll of an ever-increasing number of children in his classroom who struggle with a range of learning disabilities. It’s the pediatrician who sees the girls in her practice developing breasts or menstruating at an earlier and earlier age each year.
Or it’s someone whose toddler has joined millions of others in America who one day suddenly and literally cannot breathe. Someone, in a word, who has come to take pollution personally—very personally.
Someone like Sloan Barnett.
Sloan’s three-year-old son Spencer has a coughing fit one day, the story goes, and that damned cough just doesn’t quit. Then his heart begins racing out of control. (As the father of a four-month-old, I found that just reading this passage got my heart racing, too.)
The next thing Sloan knows, she and her husband Roger, terrified, are rushing little Spencer to the nearest emergency room. He’s given oxygen. He’s given steroids. He’s in intensive care for days. It’s another variation on every parent’s nightmare.
Fortunately, the Barnetts got Spencer back on his feet. And when they did, Sloan went searching for answers, with the determination and persistence you would expect from a former Manhattan assistant district attorney (Motto: Don’t get mad, get subpoenas!) turned consumer reporter.
Green Goes With Everything is the result. And take it from somebody in the business of vetting the risks pollution and toxic consumer products pose to our health: this is a smart, breezy, deeply informative book you want at your fingertips. And unlike so many sources of green advice, Sloan’s book is an easy, well-organized read, and, in lieu of any preaching or hectoring, you get humor, nuance and the humility of an author who is learning all this herself for the first time, with refreshing dashes of sass throughout.
Sloan learned pretty quickly that chemicals in some cleaning products have been shown to trigger exactly the kind of asthma attack that gripped her little guy (“reactive airways dysfunction syndrome”).
“That stopped me cold,” she writes. “The cause of my son’s asthma may have been me. I may have been poisoning my own son.”
She readily found safer substitutes for those nasty cleaners under her sink. Then she systematically took the same approach—research, toss, replace—for basically every product category in her household, from the groceries that came into the kitchen to the personal care products in the bathroom cabinet. That’s more than most of us might do. It was just the beginning for Sloan Barnett.
Her training and experience as a prosecutor and career as a columnist and consumer reporter have given Sloan the tools and drive to dig deeper and nail the story and the “bad guys,” who in this case comprise a motley assortment of toxic chemicals, needlessly dangerous products, corporate green-wash artists, toothless government laws, self-regulated industries and ingrained personal habits and cultural norms that inhibit both individual action and societal reform.
I don’t know about sweat and tears—but Barnett literally gave blood -- 17 vials of it -- to write this book. Laboratory analyses revealed that her blood was polluted with dozens and dozens of toxic chemicals: bisphenol A, the synthetic estrogen and endocrine-disrupting chemical in polycarbonate plastic and epoxy can linings; PFOA, the likely human carcinogen used to make Teflon; PCBs, DDT and other compounds banned 30 years ago; flame retardants; triclosan, the “anti-microbial” agent that through the miracle of modern marketing has come to displace good old-fashioned soap.
It was quite a witch’s brew of multiple carcinogens, neurotoxin and chemicals that can cause birth defects and hormone disruption.
Some people might have stopped there, with a mournful blast at those who have polluted the planet. But Sloan Barnett is positive person who is convinced that if we understand what we’re doing and take the time to do it right, we can begin to change the world back to the way we want it. Her book tells us how to reduce our exposures to toxic chemicals, with chapters titled “Clean Body”, “Clean Baby”, “Clean Food” and so on through water, air and energy.
I can’t recommend Green Goes With Everything enough. My wife and I find ourselves consulting it constantly, whether we are pondering a new appliance or wondering about a safer way to clean a bathtub. “What’s Sloan say?” we ask.
Buy her book and find out.
Conflicts of interest at the FDA...again
Last Tuesday, under fire from Congress and consumer groups, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration promised to investigate ties between a key science advisor and business interests maneuvering to avert a federal ban on bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous toxic plastics chemical, in baby bottles, food packaging and medical devices.
The very next morning, however, the FDA announced that an advisory board meeting on the BPA issue would go forward on Oct. 31, as previously scheduled. And the scientist whose apparent conflict of interest is at issue -- Martin Philbert, a University of Michigan toxicologist – remains chair of the two-man panel and is poised to play a pivotal role in the agency’s upcoming decision on BPA.
Federal ethics inquiries take months and sometimes years. So it seems the FDA intends to investigate Philbert’s apparent conflict of interest after he renders his advice on BPA – a synthetic estrogen and plastics component whose manufacture generates global annual revenues estimated at $6 billion.
The agency’s decision to rush ahead with its Oct. 31 Science Board meeting on BPA policy is, quite simply, an act of defiance of the many thoughtful lawmakers, scientists and health and consumer advocates concerned about the continued exposure of Americans to BPA, linked in more than 200 animal studies to cancer, brain, nervous system and behavior problems, hormone disruption and reproductive system damage.
The Environmental Working Group has called on the FDA to halt the work of the Science Board and its BPA subcommittee, which Philbert heads, until questions are resolved about Philbert’s relationship with a retired medical device manufacturer and persistent critic of environmental regulators who recently made a $5 million gift to a University of Michigan scientific research center directed by Philbert.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Oct. 11 that Philbert did not disclose the gift to the FDA, even though it came within weeks of his appointment as chair of a two-person subcommittee assessing the risk of BPA for the regulatory agency. According to the Journal Sentinel, donor Charles Gelman acknowledged he had had “several conversations” with Philbert about his view that BPA is “perfectly safe” and that he believed concerns about the chemical had been exaggerated by "mothers' groups and others who don't know the science."
Philbert has been quoted as saying that Gelman tried to discuss BPA with him but that he rebuffed these conversations as “inappropriate.” We have no reason to doubt that assertion. Still, it’s an implicit confirmation that Philbert knew very well where Gelman was coming from.
For all we know, Philbert may not agree with Gelman about BPA. Indeed, he may have no opinion at all: he is a veteran and respected researcher whose expertise has nothing to do with BPA, plastics or food safety. (His lack of depth in the thorny science of low-dose BPA exposure raises other questions about why, exactly, FDA put him in charge of the BPA review.)
But back to his relationship with Charles Gelman. Here, there is an untenable appearance of a conflict of interest. Gelman's gift may not have paid Philbert's salary, as FDA officials insist. But it certainly promises to add considerable luster to Philbert's career. The University of Michigan's press release boasted that the Gelman gift would "position the University to become the nation's premier comprehensive resource for assessing, quantifying and communicating risks to public health." If you man the helm of any institution that aspires to be the "nation's premier" in any field, a generous gift that puts that ambitious goal within reach is a glittering prize.
By ignoring questions about this contretemps and steaming ahead with its decision-making process on BPA, FDA is only undermining its own credibility.
Not that it has much credibility left: under the current administration, the agency has time and again tolerated minor to egregious conflicts of interest on its numerous advisory bodies. For that reason, EWG is urging the FDA to conduct a rigorous audit and screening of all Science Board members and advisors.
Several members of Congress, including Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak, D-MI, Edward J. Markey, D-MA, and Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, have also called for a full investigation of FDA’s handling of the Philbert-Gelman matter.
If FDA fails to heed reasonable calls for truly independent, science-based regulation of BPA, it will chalk up one more reason for a top-down overhaul. We can do better than this.
Photo by Mommyof4Ruggies
'Tis the season of giving...to EWG, of course!
It's never easy or fun to ask people for money. But. At least in our case we know how well we use it and how important our work is in the fight to protect environmental health. And we're not the only ones who think that, which is good news. We've earned 4-star status from Charity Navigator for years now.
So please, think of us this year, and how the work we do affects your family. Plus, you'll get our fabulous safer products bag, and these days, just about everyone (on your holiday shopping list!) could use one, don't you think? Here's what's in it:
- A 27 oz. Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle -- the perfect solution to using less plastic and avoiding contaminated bottled water
- Jumbo Enviro-Tote made from 100% recycled plastic, printed with EWG's pollution solutions
- 6-piece Pyrex glass container set (no more Tupperware!)
- Crummy Brothers organic chocolate chip cookies
- $25 in free product coupons, plus...
- EWG's most popular tools for healthy living
As a special incentive, the first 500 donors who order the gift bag will also receive a complimentary copy of the book Green Goes With Everything by Sloan Barnett.
Why support EWG? Because we research, expose and inform you about toxic chemicals and hidden contaminants in everything from your shampoo to your kitchen cupboard. Then we offer "pollution solutions" to help you make healthier choices every day. Take our fight against bisphenol A (BPA). EWG helped expose the risks of BPA - a potent hormone disrupter that's been leaching toxic chemicals into countless everyday items. BPA is found in baby bottles, water bottles, infant formula and even our canned foods. We've been fighting non-stop to make sure BPA is banned from consumer products.
As consumers, it's hard to know how to avoid BPA. That's why we filled our 2008 Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag with BPA-free goodies to keep you healthy and also reduce waste.
When you make your first-time donation to EWG of $135 or more, your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by generous donors and we'll send you a Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag.
Donating to EWG is a great investment. We pride ourselves on staying lean and stretching your donations to the limit -- so your money goes toward groundbreaking research and sweeping environmental change. And with a more environmentally friendly Congress and Presidential administration on the way in, EWG will have even more opportunities in 2009 to push for the kind of change we need to protect our health and our environment.
Go ahead, do it! Just click here to make your donation and get your 2008 Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag today. You can get started on your holiday shopping with a great deal, and you can rest assured that your donation will have a big impact on the work we do in 2009 and beyond.
PS - Feeling torn between keeping the gift bag for yourself or giving it to a friend? We'll send you two for just $245 (that's a savings of $35) and your donation will still be doubled.
Got funds for that research?
Even though I spent most of my school years trying to avoid science classes as much as possible, I have to acknowledge the importance of science in the lives of people. We need science to help us understand the world around us and how things function and relate to one another.
That's why the thought of political involvement in scientific research scares me. In the ideal world, there would be no connection between the research and politics. But we all know we don't live in an ideal world, and very often science and politics are connected. In addition, the last 8 years have been less then ideal as far as government support of the science research is concerned.
The problem is big. Within last few years, there were major budget cuts at the federal agencies dealing with issues such as environment, public health and consumer safety. Many Bush administration policies have jeopardized research on those issues.
Also concerning is the recent investigation of Joanna Kempner, sociologist at the Rutgers University in New Jersey. According to ABC news, she
"Questioned 157 scientists who found their work at the crux of a 2003 political clash between several members of Congress, a Christian lobbyist group called the Traditional Values Coalition and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).Of the 112 scientists who responded to the survey and interviews, 51 percent said they have since self-censored their grant proposals to remove "red flag" words, such as gay, lesbian, AIDS, needle-exchange or anal sex from their titles or abstracts. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they either modified their studies to seem less controversial or abandoned controversial grant proposals. "
The political clash occurred in July 2003, when former congressman Patrick Toomey (R, PA) argued that National Institutes of Health grants funding studies on certain types of sexual behavior were less worthy of taxpayer dollars than those on devastating diseases. He proposed an amendment, to the 2004 NIH appropriations bill to revoke funding for five grants four of which examined sexual behavior. The amendment was later defeated.
NIH is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary government agency responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Should I mention tit is financed by the taxpayers? And that would be all taxpayers, not just heterosexual, AIDS- free and healthy ones.
It is hard to say what was lost with the practice of self-censoring at the NIH. But even though limited, the Kempner study shows the concern that scientist might have with the political climate. Peter Bearman, a sociologist at Columbia University, agrees in this Nature News article:
"The study shows that perceptions of the ideological climate lead scientists to try to avoid research projects that they think will not be funded, or which will stop them from receiving funding in the future.The study also reveals how the NIH - an institution supposed to be insulated from political interference -- has been "tarnished by the Bush administration's pursuit of ideological purity instead of effective science", says Bearman. It shows that scientists whose studies fall under political scrutiny "fail to engage in the best science they can, for fear that proposing to do so will result in no support". This can lead to suboptimal science and the propagation of pseudoscience in its place, he says. "
Photo by Tracy O
Global Hand-Washing Day promoted worldwide
Last couple of days, it's been all about the bottled water here at EWG. The same day we released our investigation, was the day the United Nations declared the Global Hand-Washing Day
The day, and the initiative to call 2008 International Year of Sanitation comes after the founding that over 80 per cent of all diseases in developing countries are attributable to unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
The action for the Global Hand-Washing Day spread across five continents in 70 countries and had affected over 120 million children.
The message about the importance of pure water and the access to it is clear. But the message about the importance of using that clear water, with soap, when washing hands is what this day wants to promote. According to the promotional web site for the day:
"Handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal and acute respiratory infections, which take the lives of millions of children in developing countries every year. Together, they are responsible for the majority of all child deaths. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practiced and difficult to promote.
Of the approximately 120 million children born in the developing world each year, half will live in households without access to improved sanitation, at grave risk to their survival and development. Poor hygiene and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrhoeal diseases, accounting for 1.5 million diarrhoea-related under-five deaths each year. Children suffer disproportionately from diarrheal and respiratory diseases and deaths. But research shows that children - the segment of society so often the most energetic, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas - can also be powerful agents of behavioral change."
Nice action UN!
Fire up yer ovens, people, it's a recipe contest
While it might seem surprising that Enviroblog is touting a recipe contest, it really makes quite a lot of sense.
Because...we read a lot of blogs where people inevitably post recipes and photos of their culinary masterpeices, we talk a lot about food, agriculture & pesticides (have you been reading our other blog?), and we like Organic Valley, the folks hosting the recipe contest!
And this is no ordinary recipe contest where you only get a prize if you win, if your concoction is actually really good. Nope. This is a feel-good thing, where everyone wins. You...and EWG! They describe it like this:
Holiday food is meaningful fare; it connects us to each other and to our roots. And when it’s made with organic ingredients, it’s a life-giving gift for family and friends, as well as future generations. What could be more delicious?This season, celebrate organic and share your recipes! We’re looking for family traditions, ethnic specialties or a new twist from your holiday kitchen. Think Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve—even Winter Solstice.
Here's how it works: you submit an original recipe (that you preferably whipped up with all organic ingredients...) and we get $1. Just like that. So go ahead, submit your recipe for all the world to try, and make an easy but important donation in the process.
Without contributions from our supporters, we couldn't do the high quality environmental research and advocacy work we do. Like the bottled water report we released yesterday or the teen body burden study we completed in September. So thanks - to Organic Valley for selecting us as one of four potential recipients, and to you for choosing us! Now let's eat.
Buyer beware: What's in your bottled water?
By Olga Naidenko, PhD and Nneka Leiba, MPH
If I want healthy, tasty, clean drinking water, and I want it today, tomorrow, and for the future, where do I turn? The bottled water industry has a ready-made answer - buy our bottled waters that come in hundreds of brands and with just as many claims that cover everything from unearthly purity to miraculous cures.
Shoppers spend their hard-earned money to purchase bottled water in part because they distrust the quality of their tap water. And while drinking pure water is a healthy choice, bottled water is not the answer. A new EWG study shows that bottled water is polluted with a range of contaminants, including many of the same chemical pollutants typical in municipal tap water supplies. Laboratory tests - conducted for EWG at one of the country's leading water quality laboratories - found that ten popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in nine states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand.
Two of ten brands tested, Walmart's and Giant's store brands, bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment -- a cocktail of chlorine disinfection byproducts at concentrations that exceeded legal limits and industry-sponsored voluntary safety standards. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria. These results show that consumers should have no confidence in the purity of the bottled water they buy. If the water at the source is contaminated, so will be the water in the bottle. And bottled water production itself can contribute additional chemical pollutants.
So how do we ensure the supply of good quality drinking water for the future? Federal, state, and local policymakers must strengthen protections for rivers, streams, and groundwater that serve as America's drinking water sources. And the environmental impacts associated with bottled water production and distribution aggravate the nation's water quality challenges rather than help solving them. Not to mention the bottle water industry's contribution to plastic pollution, one of the biggest environmental problems facing the world today. Only one-fifth of the bottles produced by the industry are recycled.
What can consumers do:
- Drink filtered tap water
A carbon filter at the tap or in a pitcher removes many of the contaminants found in public tap water supplies. EWG compared the prices and capacities of seven faucet-mounted and pitcher filters. The prices ranged from $19.99 to $39.99 with capacities ranging from 40 gallons to 100 gallons, resulting in a manageable cost of $0.31 per gallon - much cheaper than the typical cost of $3.89 per gallon of bottled water. - For additional safety, consider a whole-house carbon filter
Installing a whole-house carbon filter will strip out chemicals not only from drinking water, but also from water used in the shower, clothes washers and dishwashers where they can volatilize into the air for families to breathe in. We compared five different units and documented prices in the range between $64.99 to $795 per unit, with life spans between 3 and 36 months. This leads to an estimated cost of $1.00/day or $0.25/day per person for a four-person household. This simple, common-sense investment will go a long way in protecting the health of the entire family, all the time. - Forgo the plastic bottles
Plastic additives, many of which have not been fully assessed for safety, can migrate from the plastic packaging into bottled water. EWG recommends that consumers use a stainless steel bottle filled with filtered tap water to avoid these potentially harmful contaminants.
All Americans deserve to have access to good quality drinking water, with full disclosure of its sources, treatment, and potential presence of chemical contaminants. Otherwise, marketing the image of purity and not delivering on the promise leaves bottled water drinkers at risk.
Mr. Yuk: He's in my house, is he in yours?
So this is a little embarrassing. On the one hand, I'm pleased with myself for getting the Mr. Yuk stickers, preventing my children from sticking them everywhere, and applying them to the grim, poisonous chemicals in our house. Job well done, mom!
On the other hand, no self-respecting EWG staffer can simply smack a label on the (many) poisons in her house and call it a night! Nope. So down I trod to the basement, where the chemicals reside, and counted them. And inventoried them. And yikes.
Worse yet, I tend to think I'm a little green, you know? No pesticides on the lawn, organic produce, recycled toilet paper, you get the picture. I know, I know, you're probably wondering what I found. So here they are, all seven of them, in all their unglory:
- Wash-in waterproofing for wet weather clothing (I live in the Pacific Northwest..)
- Hot shot flying insect killer ("kills fast!")
- Rust-oleum gloss protective enamel (husband?)
- Interior-exterior spray paint (no runs, no drips, no errors!)
- Chlorine bleach (brightens whites, removes stains, cleans and deodorizes)
- Carpet spot remover (for those really tough spots)
- Laundry stain remover (powerful stain fighting ingredients)
Now that the truth is out, the confession thankfully over, it's time to shepherd them right to the household hazardous waste disposal facility. Phew, that was pretty easy. But wait, what will I use instead?? After a little research, I discovered it's just as easy to get along without all this Yuk, it's just not what I'm familiar with.
So, for flying insects? I'll hang a trap or have someone (not me!) remove the nest. For spray paint, well, I'll use a brush. For whitening the whites, I'll switch to non-chlorine bleach since there's no need to disinfect our clothes. Point being, there are alternatives aplenty, it's just a question of doing it. Our Healthy Home tip sheet makes it easy, and includes this straightforward recommendation:
Use greener cleaners & avoid pesticides. Household cleaners, bug killers, pet treatments, and air fresheners can irritate kids' lungs, especially if your kids have asthma. Investigate less toxic alternatives. Use vinegar in place of bleach, baking soda to scrub your tiles, and hydrogen peroxide to remove stains.
I have a sneaking suspicion I'm not alone in having a stash of unnecessary, poisonous chemicals in my house. How many Mr. Yuk stickers do you have in your house? Not to pick on a very useful guy, but the fewer Mr. Yuk stickers in our midst, the better. So go ahead, count, inventory, dispose safely, and retool. Not sure where you'll find them? Check this whole-house tool to see what typically is kept where.
This deYuking project packs a big punch for a minimal effort. And in addition to avoiding hazardous exposures during routine use, you'll greatly reduce the potential for an urgent call to poison control (1-800-222-1212).
Been a long time leaving*
For the first EWG project I worked on, our data was collected by a guy who "borrowed" the equipment and hauled it up and down Highway 101 in the trunk of his car, where he was living at the time. I think we got a story in the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. For one of the last, nationwide blood samples were analyzed in a Stockholm University laboratory by one of the world's foremost environmental chemists, and the results will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
It's not that EWG's campaigns haven't always been backed by rigorous science. (We fired the guy when we found out he'd boosted the equipment.) But over the last 12 years, it's been beyond cool to see the organization mature and grow – in resources, but even more in reputation and reach.
The staff is smart and skilled – not just about the issues, but about politics and the media. Hundreds of thousands of consumers value our guidance on safe food, cosmetics, baby products and more. Mainstream and online journalists turn to us for the names of farm subsidy fat cats, or to guide them through the 1872 Mining Law. Lawmakers and corporations want to work with us – when they're not afraid of us.
I have only a few more days to say us. This is the last Greetings from California, at least from me. After more than a decade heading EWG's California office, I'm moving down the block (literally) to become campaign director at Earthjustice. ("Because the Earth needs a good lawyer.") It should go without saying that I will miss EWG and its people very much. Ken Cook and Richard Wiles have built exactly the organization the movement needed: data-driven, politically- and media-savvy, tough, irreverent but completely serious about its mission.
If EWG's so great, why am I leaving?
First of all, 12 years is a long time in any job. I'm a restless type; I'd never managed to remain more than 4 years at any previous job. Working in the environmental movement is a real privilege, but you have to avoid burnout. As we used to say in the nomadic newspaper business, sometimes you just need to look out a different window. (Imagine a time when there were so many jobs in U.S. journalism that if you got pissed at your city editor you could probably get a better assignment in another town.)
Beyond that, I felt the need to reinvent myself, refurbish my tool kit. (Job-hunting talk.) I've either been part of the daily mainstream news media, or flacking it, for . . . you don't want to know. Anyway, with the MSM as we once knew it in meltdown, it's time to expand the portfolio. I'll still be dealing with the media world, but in different ways. I'll be working on some new issues. But I'll keep working on some old issues, using different tactics. And I'll be blogging over there, once I get settled in.
Thanks to Enviroblog's readers for allowing me to invade your cyberspace every Monday. Thanks to all the EWG staffers, past and present, who've made the organization what it is. We'll do beer:30 again sometime. Last but not least, special thanks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for supplying so much material for these posts. Hasta la vista, baby.
*Tip of the hat to Waylon Jennings
More heat, less water
a) No matter how much we disagree with it, global warming is happening.
b) Now what do we do?
After years of denial, now there is a sudden – and much needed – flurry of action, acknowledging the warnings of many scientists that the effects of global climate change coupled with growing population and rising consumption trends will first hit our water supplies.
On October 2 the EPA Office of Water issued a National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change with an overview of the likely effects of climate change on the nation’s supply of safe drinking water, clean water for recreational, agricultural and industrial uses, and the health of rivers, streams, ocean coastal waters and other natural habitats.
In EPA’s view, what can we anticipate for the future? Of note, there would be likely increases in water pollution problems, since warmer air temperatures will result in warmer water, leading to lower oxygen levels, higher toxicity of some pollutants and the “dead zones”. These changes would affect aquatic life and cause significant deterioration of aquatic ecosystem health. Further, we all are now attuned to the greater risk of extreme weather-related events and their collective impact on the coastal areas. Finally, all across the country there would be changes to the availability of drinking water supplies, another trend that many cities across the South and Southwest are already experiencing.
At this moment in the game, we need to devote resources to both mitigation (trying to decrease greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere) and adaptation, which will require building up infrastructure robust enough to deal with these likely changes. Nowhere is the issue more acute than in the water industry. The Bureau of Reclamation at the Department of the Interior just announced a new joint initiative with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) whose explicit goal is “to anticipate future water supplies and to plan for the needs of a growing population” so as to prevent possible future “water wars.” Water wars? This is something that happens in other places, but not in our homeland, correct? Alas, no. As announced in the initiative, “abundant supplies of clean, fresh water can no longer be taken for granted… Water wars have spread to the Midwest, East, and South… As this competition escalates during a time of chronic drought and changing climate, water conflicts are occurring within states, among states, between states and the Federal government and among environmentalists and state and Federal agencies.”
Water conservation, reclamation and protection from pollution are all needed to ensure that we and our children will continue to enjoying plentiful water supply for many years to come. And, as in many past moments of crisis, these challenges are also opportunities for innovation, as industries are developing new technologies for water purification on both sides of the pipe – treatment of wastewater to remove pollutants from flowing into rivers, streams, and oceans, and treatment of drinking water to ensure safety and purity of municipal water supplies. We either already have the necessary technology or we are close to developing it, so long as there is political will to move in this life-saving direction.
The EPA Water Program Strategy identifies improved energy efficiency at water and wastewater utilities as Key Action # 1 which needs to include energy performance benchmarking programs, use of energy audits and energy tracking systems, development of alternative energy sources within plants (e.g., solar, wind, hydro), and installation of combined heat and power systems for heat and energy generation at wastewater treatment facilities. And, as always, water conservation is ever in fashion. We all can do our part while ensuring that our elected local, state, and federal officials keep water issues on top of their agendas.
Photo by woodlywonderworks
Green Chemistry: Breakthrough or bureaucratic dead end?
This analysis was written by EWG Executive Director Richard Wiles and Senior Analyst Renee Sharp.
This session the California Legislature considered no less than eight bills that would have banned or restricted individual chemicals or groups of chemicals in consumer products. Under the one-two punch of an intense lobbying campaign by the chemical industry and the public opposition of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration, all but one of the bills was defeated. The one that passed, Senate Bill 1313, a ban on the use of Teflon chemicals called PFCs in food packaging, was ultimately vetoed by the governor.
Banning chemicals through the legislative process has always been a clumsy way to advance public health policy. But there are times when it is necessary. In 1976, Congress banned PCBs as part of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The flame retardant Deca-BDE was banned in several states beginning in 2006. This year Congress banned the plasticizers known as phthalates in children’s toys, following on the lead of several states, including California.
The growing wave of legislation in the states to ban individual chemicals is a direct response to a broken federal system. More than 30 years after its passage, TSCA is an abject failure. American babies are born pre-polluted with 300 chemicals in their bodies and no federal agency is doing anything about it.
In signaling their opposition to single chemical bans, many California legislators ducked behind the shield of the need for comprehensive chemical policy reform. They said they were voting against individual chemical bans but voting for Assembly Bill 1879 and Senate Bill 509, which the administration had turned into a framework for the Green Chemistry Initiative, a state plan for systematically evaluating chemicals for possible ban or restriction.
Schwarzenegger quickly signed the two bills, hailing them as ushering in “California’s Historic Green Chemistry Initiative.” He declared: “This bi-partisan package of environmental legislation propels California to the forefront of the nation and the world with the most comprehensive Green Chemistry program ever established.” A week later, when he vetoed SB 1313, he again pointed to AB 1879 and SB 509: “It is within this process that chemicals like PFCs should be addressed.”
This cheerleading would be a lot more encouraging if the bill had the substance to match. Instead of real chemical policy reform, 1879 is the product of strong-arm politics. It is a take-it-or-leave-it-deal written by the governor’s staff, forced on the Legislature and endorsed by the chemical industry.
It takes one important step forward, for the first time giving the state the right to regulate chemicals in consumer products. But it champions green chemistry at the expense of the basic health protections from chemical exposures that all Californians deserve. By passing this bill California has put vague notions of green chemistry ahead of health protections for its citizens, and in the process surrendered its leadership position on chemical policy reform.
Instead of banning dangerous chemicals, California is embarking on a multi-decade odyssey in search of green chemistry, with no hard deadlines, no public health mandate, and just about no money to pay for it.
No Health Standards
AB 1879 is a far cry from comprehensive chemical policy reform.
It does not establish a human health safety standard or public health goal for chemicals of concern or their prospective substitutes. It does not require that any health or safety data be generated on chemicals that may present significant risks to people. In fact, AB 1879 is completely devoid of any tangible commitment to protect the health of the people of California.
Instead the legislation requires the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to develop a process by which DTSC may identify priority chemicals of concern, and identify a range of possible actions that it might or might not take against these chemicals at some unknown date in the future. But in order even to propose such an action, the state must conduct a mind-numbingly detailed “life cycle analysis” that incorporates a least thirteen different environmental assessments, nearly all of which are completely irrelevant to the human health risks presented by the chemical.
Instead of protecting human health, AB 1879, with its mandatory raft of analyses, virtually guarantees that no action will be taken in California to prevent or limit exposure to even the most hazardous chemicals in commerce. No wonder chemical industry lobbyists threw a party when it passed.
These failings set AB 1879 apart from pioneering California statues like the California Clean Air Act, or the California Safe Drinking Water Act; laws that moved an entire nation to strengthen public health protections from pollutants. In contrast, this legislation will do quite the opposite, providing a statutory shield for chemical companies who want to delay health protections and preserve the status quo while bureaucrats and industry contractors ponder the problem.
It is no surprise that AB 1879 is embraced by the chemical industry. Like its favorite federal environmental law, TSCA, AB 1879 is certain to produce a monumental regulatory logjam, at great cost to the public, with no concurrent health benefits.
As its first requirement, Section 25252 (a), the bill states:
… On or before January 1, 2011, the department shall adopt regulations to establish a process to identify and prioritize those chemicals or chemical ingredients in consumer products that may be considered a chemical of concern…
The bill, however, does not require that any chemicals actually be named as chemicals of concern. And if some chemicals ultimately are identified, there is no requirement to do anything about it. There is simply a requirement that:
…..the department shall develop criteria by which chemicals and their alternatives may be evaluated.” Section 25252 (b) 1
Instead of action to protect the public health, the bill requires the DTSC to establish a process that includes a range of options for reducing exposure from the most dangerous chemicals, from doing nothing, to labeling, to balancing profits against pubic health, to adoption of so-called green chemistry.
(b) The regulations adopted pursuant to this section shall specify
the range of regulatory responses that the department may take
following the completion of the alternatives analysis, including,
but not limited to, any of the following actions:
(1) Not requiring any action.
(2) Imposing requirements to provide additional information
needed to assess a chemical of concern and its potential
alternatives.
(3) Imposing requirements on the labeling or other type of
consumer product information.
(4) Imposing a restriction on the use of the chemical of concern
in the consumer product.
(5) Prohibiting the use of the chemical of concern in the
consumer product.
(6) Imposing requirements that control access to or limit
exposure to the chemical of concern in the consumer product.
(7) Imposing requirements for the manufacturer to manage the
product at the end of its useful life, including recycling or
responsible disposal of the consumer product.
(8) Imposing a requirement to fund green chemistry challenge
grants where no feasible safer alternative exists.
(9) Any other outcome the department determines accomplishes
the requirements of this article.
Swamped in the Morass of Analysis
But perhaps AB 1879’s most elegant conceit is how the bill buries the critical human health risks posed by uncontrolled exposures to thousands of chemicals in consumer products, under an avalanche of theoretical analyses of chemical impacts on global warming, water quality, energy use, and disposal. While each of these issues is important, they are already covered by other statutes, whereas public exposure to and risk from chemicals in consumer products is not. By wrapping the human health threat posed by chemical exposure in the cloak of every environmental concern imaginable, the bill ensures that human health risks will be obscured and business as usual will prevail.
Mandatory Life Cycle Analysis
The program envisioned in the plan is anchored by a series of so-called life cycle analyses (LCA) that must be prepared for each chemical of concern and all of its alternatives, before a chemical could be restricted in any way. LCA purports to be a quantitative cradle to grave analysis of the total environmental impact of all aspects of a product’s life, from mining the minerals, to powering the production plant, through manufacturing, transportation, use of the product and disposal.
The bills spell out LCA requirements in detail, listing a minimum of thirteen different types of impacts, from water pollution to greenhouse gases, to product function and resource consumption that must be evaluated for every potential chemical of concern and its alternatives.
Section 25253 (a)
(2) The regulations adopted pursuant to this section shall
establish a process that includes an evaluation of the availability
of potential alternatives and potential hazards posed by those
alternatives, as well as an evaluation of critical exposure pathways.
This process shall include life cycle assessment tools that take into
consideration, but shall not be limited to, all of the following:
(A) Product function or performance.
(B) Useful life.
(C) Materials and resource consumption.
(D) Water conservation.
(E) Water quality impacts.
(F) Air emissions.
(G) Production, in-use, and transportation energy inputs.
(H) Energy efficiency.
(I) Greenhouse gas emissions.
(J) Waste and end-of-life disposal.
(K) Public health impacts, including potential impacts to
sensitive subpopulations, including infants and children.
(L) Environmental impacts.
(M) Economic impacts.
This elaborate, bureaucratic gauntlet of analyses and reviews would have to be performed before any chemical, however unsafe, might be restricted or removed from commerce. LCA is incredibly costly, dependent on data that are often not available, loaded with assumptions as a result, and ultimately subject to value judgments that can have great impact on the outcome of the analysis.
A 2006 report prepared for the U.S. EPA National Risk Management Research Laboratory summarized this situation this way:
Limitations of Conducting an LCA
Performing an LCA can be resource and time intensive. Depending upon how thorough an LCA the user wishes to conduct, gathering the data can be problematic, and the availability of data can greatly impact the accuracy of the final results. Therefore, it is important to weigh the availability of data, the time necessary to conduct the study, and the financial resources required against the projected benefits of the LCA.
LCA will not determine which product or process is the most cost effective or works the best. Therefore, the information developed in an LCA study should be used as one component of a more comprehensive decision process assessing the trade-offs with cost and performance, e.g., Life Cycle Management. [1]
AB 1879 ignores just about all of these important limitations. It does not acknowledge the substantial costs and resources needed to conduct a single LCA. It fails to take into account the fact that lack of data for any number of the analyses mandated in the bill will be a major obstacle to completion of the LCA, and it ignores that fact that as a result of data unavailability, assumptions will infiltrate every LCA and greatly affect the outcome.
Most important, according to the EPA “LCA will not determine which product or process is the most cost effective or works the best.” Yet the first requirement of the life cycle section of 1879 requires just that specific assessment:
25253 (a)(2)
This process shall include life cycle assessment tools that take into
consideration, but shall not be limited to, all of the following:
(A) Product function or performance.
Any number of peer-reviewed critiques of LCA reinforce these basic limitations:
The first stage in the analysis is quantitative comparisons of materials flows and transformations. Energy fluxes are important insofar as they involve materials (e.g., fuels, combustion products). This can be an extremely valuable exercise, if done carefully. However, the data required to accomplish this first step are not normally available from published sources. Theoretical process descriptions from open sources may not correspond to actual practice. Moreover, so-called 'confidential' data are unverifiable (by definition) and may well be erroneous. In the absence of a formal materials balance accounting system, such errors may not be detected. [2]
Arnold Tukker (1999), an LCA expert, has concluded that the underlying weaknesses of the LCA method are too great to withstand skeptical scrutiny:
“…I believe it will never be possible to solve controversial discussions about products with an LCIA [life cycle inventory assessment] method that is based solely on mathematical relations between interventions and protection areas. There are simply too many uncertainties, there is too much ignorance, and they can only be overcome by all kinds of subjective, subtle, and basically value-laden choices…” [3]
The current glacial pace of chemical review by the state’s resource-challenged public health agencies is perhaps the major failing of the present system, and given political and financial realities, creating a new, intensely bureaucratic, and as yet unfunded regulatory regime this bill will only heighten the logjam.
Even if California had unlimited funds and resources to ensure that chemical analyses could be performed at the pace needed to respond to the ubiquity of dangerous chemicals, and to ensure that the findings would be acted on promptly, the lack of any public health directive ensures that at the end of the process, no matter how dangerous the chemical, no health protections could be guaranteed.
Facing the Future
AB 1879 is now the law.
Many California environmental groups, including some of our closest allies, endorsed AB 1879 and applauded the governor’s signature. They rightfully point to the fact that the state now has authority over chemicals in consumer products, and feel that from their meetings with DTSC, they trust that the agency will act, not just study chemicals to death.
We hope they’re right. Unfortunately we see a likely future where, despite the best efforts and intentions of DTSC’s scientists, industry lobbyists will use the life cycle assessment process to delay action against chemicals even when risks are well established. This is how the industry uses TSCA, under which the EPA was unable to ban asbestos because the industry sued to challenge the validity of required studies. In California, manufacturers of the pesticide fumigant methyl bromide held off stricter regulations for at least a decade by repeatedly challenging tests by the Department of Pesticide Regulation.
How will the environmental and public health community respond to AB 1879? The agency is given until 2011 to even propose rules for the Green Chemistry process; will California take no action on toxic chemicals for two years or more?
It is incumbent on all of us to fight back by watchdogging DTSC closely. We must think strategically about how to force swift action by DTSC, or how to go outside the process, when a chemical poses imminent harm to Californians. One idea may be to sponsor legislation that orders DTSC to act on a particularchemical or product, although legislators and the governor could again hide behind the shield of Green Chemistry.
EWG is committed to doing all we can, and working with other environmental advocates, to ensure that this new system protects the health of Californians. But we think the deck’s been stacked.
References
[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Life Cycle Assessment: Principles and Practice. EPA/600/R-06/060. National Risk Management Laboratory. May 2006. http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/pdfs/chapter1_frontmatter_lca101.pdf
[2] Ayres, R. 1995. Life cycle analysis: a critique. Resources, conservation and recycling. 14(3-4): 199-223. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2890588
[3] Tukker, A., Life Cycle Impact Assessment – Some Remarks. Life Cycle Impact Assessment of SETAC-Europe (Second Working Group – WIA-2). http://www.healthybuilding.net/pvc/CPA_EC_LCA_Critique.html#_edn1
Getting the kids to school: Step away from the car, mom
In a city where boxbikes and xtracycles (photo, right) are becoming the norm, it's hard to admit that we drive our kids to and from school every day - alone. Especially when there are so many dedicated parents going car-free.. in the rain! For a great look at what it's really like in bike land, check out this recent article in the local paper on commuting with kids. Whoa.
So after doing this solo driving thing again yesterday, on International Walk & Bike to School Day no less, I've been thinking. Thinking how we could do a little better without totally throwing a wrench in our tightly wound family schedule. And while we concluded that walking the whole way is out of the question (2+ miles), and that biking could work but with expensive equipment and a traffic-scared mom at the handlebars, we did find one (measly) alternative: carpool with classmates. Rocket science this is not; challenging it is.
Why bother? My husband and I delved into the reasons for it all (there are, of course, many), our feelings about them (how much should we do here?), and crafted a bit of a long-range plan. And as someone with a long bus, train, and community carpooling history (that abruptly stopped with this nutty 2-kid, 2-school, 2-working parents thing), I can legitimately toss those options into the mix, even though they're technically not as 'pure' as walking and biking. Though we may just try that, say, once a month, both to do the right thing (at least once in a while) and see how it feels. Sometimes etching new patterns in our lives is all it takes.
Plus, there are all sorts of community and cultural benefits associated with getting out from behind the wheel, right? New people, new places, new smells, even (that big bakery near our school). And one hope I have for this family thought process is to selectively choose our commitments within our walk + bike zone. Why pick the music class across town when we could do the one, uh, within biking distance? Why swim across the river when there's one - literally - in our school basement? These changes may take time, but it's just such short-commute induced thinking that'll ultimately make it happen.
Identifying barriers. With changes like this I try to identify what (I think) is standing between me and change. My barrier. With bike commuting there's safety, time and distance. For me, feeling pressed for time is the most challenging. For many, it is community support in the form of connected sidewalks, bike lanes, and safe crosswalks. Check out these handy walkability and bikability community checklists.. With good reason, they focus on the world we walk and bike in, and how conducive it is to, well, walking and biking. And of course there's a blog (or 2 or 100) for all this, but this one is devoted to bike commuting in all its forms. Its tag line is: tips, news, reviews and safety for bike commuters.
Here in Portland, it's pretty darn bike-friendly, so my challenge is more personal. But in many parts of the U.S., these tools are important building blocks to (un)pave the way for families who want to make the necessary personal changes - so that every day can be walk and bike to school day, not just October 8th.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Gilbert, Portland mom who lives car-free with 3 kids. Count 'em 3.
Starbucks' massive water waste
There are few things that we can all do without in life. And then, there are some that we definitely can’t do without. Like water.
Water has become major a human rights, environmental, and public health issue in recent years. The reason for that there is just not enough of it to go around. The numbers of those struggling to meet their basic water needs increases as the time goes. However, those who have access to fresh water are still not doing everything they could to stop wasting it. Some do very little.
Starbucks is a great example of somebody that wastes water. The U.S. owned multinational coffee giant, according to the recent reports, is wasting 23 million liters of water, daily. That is 607 595 gallons, or full Olympic pool, every 83 minutes. Or enough to supply two million people with water in countries suffering drought.
Starbucks wastes water by leaving the taps running in its worldwide stores all day. The Starbucks officials defend that practice by saying that the purpose is to clean utensils and meet health standards.
Even the U.S., a country with more water supply then many others, will face water shortages. This will affect an estimated 36 states. The freshwater supplies are dwindling across the country due to droughts, rising temperatures, population and inefficient resource usage. The U.S. uses more than 148 trillion gallons of fresh water per year, for all purposes.
Water shortages are felt even more in countries where there is less fresh water. This is especially true for the developing countries where around half of the population suffers from diseases linked to lack of access to clean water and sanitation.
It is concerning that Starbucks is wasting this much water, but at least now I understand why their coffee costs so much - they must have a huge utility bill! The company should find ways to maintain its health standards while not wasting this precious natural resource.
You, on the other hand, should not be a Starbucks. Some of the steps you can take to reduce your water waste are:
- Fix leaky faucets
- Run only full loads in the dishwasher and washing machine
- Turn off the water when you brush your teeth
- Shorten your showers
To read our great suggestions, check out the Red Cross list.
Thanks, Calvin, for focusing the nation on children's health
Yesterday was our 80th annual National Child Health Day. In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge issued the nation's first proclamation to promote children's health - prompted by labor unions and women's groups (surprise!).
In reviewing the original proclamation, we found much of it worth sharing - and applauding - because here at EWG we also like to focus the nation's attention on children's heath. President Coolidge proclaimed:
WHEREAS the protection and development of the health of the children of today are fundamental necessities to the future progress and welfare of the Nation;AND WHEREAS, the conservation and promotion of child health places upon us a grave responsibility;
AND WHEREAS, it is appropriate that a day should be set apart each year for the direction of our thoughts towards the health and well-being of our children;
NOW, therefore, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, do hereby set apart [one day in every] year as Child Health Day and do invite the people of the United States and all agencies and organizations interested in child welfare to unite upon that day in the observance of such exercises as will acquaint the people of the Nation with the fundamental necessity of a year-round program for the protection and development of the health of the Nation's children.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this day has focused on a number of issues over the years, all of them important: prenatal care, adolescent health issues, day care on child development, childhood injury prevention, and immunization. This year's focus is on obesity prevention. An unfortunate but very real issue.
To help, HHS has put together some excellent tips for parents & caregivers, schools and teachers, and whole communities. There is a good bit of info in all this about food choices, clearly an important piece of all this equation. But. They forgot about organics and pesticides in all that food talk. True, pesticides and obesity are not linked. But in our minds, any time there's talk about kids and healthy food choices, organics should be discussed.
Why organics? There is growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood when exposures can have long lasting effects. Because the toxic effects of pesticides are worrisome, not well understood, or in some cases completely unstudied, shoppers are wise to minimize exposure to pesticides whenever possible. More on why reducing exposure is smart here.
Learn more about pesticides and produce on our Food News site, where you'll see that it doesn't have to be expensive to avoid pesticides in your produce because you can focus on what we call 'the dirty dozen,' the 12 fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide loads. Think your friends and family should know about this, too? Share the guide via email here.
Feeling generous? Great. Donate to our action fund and we'll send you a fridge magnet with our Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce.
Poisonous pastime
Since the U.S. banned lead from gasoline and paint in 1978, there has been increasing recognition that even the smallest amounts of lead are extremely hazardous to human health. Basically, scientists and doctors have concluded that there is no safe level of lead exposure. The crusade against lead has gotten it out of faucets, lunchboxes, candies, toys, and many other items. But there's one significant source -- more accurately, hundreds of sources across the country -- of lead exposure that not only is largely unregulated but in some places operates on public land.
Jane Kay recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:
For 40 years on clear mornings, avid shooters have turned out at the Petaluma Trap and Skeet Club for the sport of popping away at clay pigeons hurled into the air.The western Sonoma County range looks idyllic with hawks and golden eagles diving over grazing sheep. But in a year's time, the rural outdoor range is strewn with seven tons of lead, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, which owns the land.
Health officials worry about even trace amounts of lead in gasoline, paint, plumbing, food and consumer products, which is why conservationists and regulators are warning about letting thousands of tons of lead accumulate at shooting ranges statewide.
Despite some cleanups and spotty county inspections, dozens of ranges in California remain under the radar of regulation.
Lead litter endangers wildlife and waterways, scientists say. Lead is so toxic that if consumed, it stunts the growth of animals and plants, and causes the loss of biological diversity, according to scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
How big a problem is lead pollution from shooting ranges? In 2001, EWG and the Violence Policy Center took a close look and found that
. . . [O]utdoor firing ranges put more lead into the environment than almost any other major industrial sector in the U.S. According to EWG and VPC, in just three years a typical firing range can become as contaminated with lead as a five-acre Superfund site, and the amount of waste lead contained in a single .45-caliber bullet is enough to contaminate the daily drinking water supply of a city the size of San Francisco to a level deemed unsafe by the U.S. EPA.
According to the National Rifle Association, there are more than 200 shooting ranges in California, and a number of them operate on public parkland, or in some cases, even receive funding from a local government's parks department. No matter how you feel about guns, even the staunchest defender of the Second Amendment would have trouble arguing that taxpayer dollars should be expended on an activity that is dangerous to the health of the community, of the facility's workers, its customers and their families. As we said seven years ago, that's like passing out cigarettes in school.
To swim or not to swim: childhood asthma and indoor swimming pools
Over the last few decades, enthusiasm for indoor swimming has been on the rise, as aquatic swim programs for babies and toddlers grew in popularity and swimming has become mandatory in many school curricula. In particular, swimming had been long recommended as a better sport for children with childhood asthma as a way to improve fitness without unduly straining the respiratory system. However, many health and safety issues remained, since increased eye and respiratory symptoms have been reported in swimmers due to their exposure to swimming pool water disinfectants or disinfection byproducts.
Now a “state of the science” report presented by researchers from premier academic institutions and government regulatory agencies from the U.S., Canada, and Europe summarized findings of 18 different studies that all noted an association between attendance at chlorinated indoor pools and increasing frequencies of allergic disease and asthma. Similar health concerns are noted for Olympic swimmers, pool workers, and lifeguards who spend a lot of time by the poolside. Moreover, the increased use of swimming pools by the very young has increased their exposure to potential respiratory irritants within the indoor swimming pool environment.
What chemicals in indoor pool water and air pose particular risks to children’s health? Chlorine is the most common chemical used to disinfect swimming pools. And while disinfection is absolutely necessary to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases, the type of disinfection, quantities of disinfection chemicals added and pool hygiene practices can have a significant impact on the safety of swimming pool water. Chlorine reacts with residual organic matter in pool water to form volatile disinfection byproducts such as chloroform and other potent respiratory irritants. Long-term exposure to these chemicals is known to pose a variety of health risks, from breathing problems to increased risk of cancer.
The best way to minimize public health risks associated with disinfection byproducts in swimming pool water is to ensure that pool construction, maintenance, and especially ventilation are optimized. For example, free chlorine levels are highest for the U.S. pools compared to swimming pools in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. One cannot but wonder whether these high allowable levels of chlorine in our swimming pools are a necessary safety measure - or just an unreasonably large quantity of chlorine that pool operators use so as to avoid applying other preventive cleanliness measures.
Parents, of course, will be eager to get a straightforward Yes or No answer to a simple question: “Will swimming or spending time at indoor pools pose an asthma risk for my child?” And while few questions in the environmental health field are ever completely settled, the opinions of scientists and findings from many countries’ experience of operating indoor swimming pools are enough to sound a strong alarm. Meanwhile, as winter approaches, many of us will have no choice but to swim indoors. The good news is that there are several common sense steps we can take to protect ourselves and our families from unnecessary exposure to disinfection byproducts in pool water:
1. Ask pool operators whether they conduct routine measurements of chemical pollutants in water. If you have your local municipal water quality report on hand, compare the levels of pool water chemicals to those in the tap water. If you wouldn’t drink it, you might not want to swim in it, especially since most young children ingest pool water while swimming.
2. Ask about ventilation, frequency of water replacement, and other hygiene practices. The steamed, misty air of an indoor pool? You probably don’t want it – more likely than not it will be loaded with volatile disinfection byproducts. Better ventilation is always a safer choice.
3. Finally, all children require adequate exercise. Splashing about the pool is one of the most memorable joys of childhood. Yet, we need to make sure that by providing our children with opportunities to exercise we are not exposing them to dangerous levels of potentially toxic chemicals.
4. Besides chlorine, pool water can be disinfected with a variety of other treatments, such as ozone or ultraviolet light. Although these water treatment methods tend to be costly, they are becoming more common.
Meanwhile, what we really need are strong federal and state programs to ensure that our streams, lakes and ocean coastal waters are clean and healthy, so that all children, everywhere, may have access to safe, natural water to play and swim in.
Photo by celikins
What's your personal body burden?
Most of us don't have the money to pay for a personal body burden analysis. And even if you do, you might be among those (like me) who would really rather not know.
I do read about other peoples' chemical body burdens, though. And while the news is generally horrifying, I don't think it hits home quite the same way when it's someone else's flame retardant breast milk or above-average level of PCBs. Don't you harbor the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you're different? That somehow your breastmilk is pure, your baby wasn't ingesting toxic chemicals when she was 3 weeks old - straight from your body? It's easy to do, even though the extensive body burden analyses conducted this century show that no-one is uncontaminated. No-one.
Get your score. Now there's a way to get an estimate of your body burden without going broke or providing blood and urine samples. We partnered with Sloan Barnett to create a simple online house tour that calculates your probable body burden based on your household environment and products - since they're a major source of our bodies' chemical loads. So this tool doesn't just deliver the bad news. It starts with the cause, making it that much easier to green your home and improve your health.
Go ahead, take the tour. You'll learn a lot about the chemical problem spots in your home - along with simple steps you can take to eliminate them. Think cleaning products, your mattresses, kids' toys, shampoo, and drycleaned clothes, for starters. As you move through your virtual house (it's a lot nicer than mine!), you'll be able to reduce your body burden score by committing to change certain hot spots. Top on my list? A vacuum with a high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter. Why? EWG staff scientists think it's a key step to reducing household toxins because they capture the widest range of particles and get rid of allergens. Kids spend lots of time on the floor, and household dust can contain contaminants like lead and fire retardants. And to prevent more pollutants from getting inside, leave your shoes at the door. How simple is that?
Want to know more? Sloan Barnett's hot-off-the-press book, Green Goes with Everything, is chock full of important facts and ways to reduce exposures. No time to read? Listen up, then - she is a TV commentator, after all.
Are Californians more flame retardant than the rest of us??
A study released today by Silent Spring Institute finds higher concentrations of toxic PBDEs in California residents, raising concerns about the unintended effects of furniture flammability laws on children's health.
Regional data from a large CDC-sponsored study was re-analyzed and found to show that participants living in California had double the PBDEs in their blood than residents of other states. While today's study only evaluated concentrations in adults, EWG recently reported that kids – like Natalie, pictured with her mom Teri Olle of San Francisco – have significantly higher PBDE levels than their mothers. This is especially worrisome because pregnancy and early life are the times of greatest vulnerability to PBDEs' toxic effects.
Californians' exposures are due to a unique state law that requires chemical fire retardants be used on the foam inside furniture. PBDEs are a toxic fire retardant that was used to meet this standard until 2005, when they were pulled off the market due to safety concerns.
The PBDE levels analyzed in today's study were collected from nearly 2,000 people in 2003 and 2004, when PBDEs were legally used. Products with PBDEs include automobile seats, couches, easy chairs, and foam padding in baby items like seats, mattresses or nursing pillows. Foam scraps containing PBDEs were glued together for carpet padding.
Despite the ban, these exposures will continue for decades. The fire retardants made their way out of these home and office items and into the environment. We ingest them in food, or hand-to-mouth contact with PBDE particles in dust or sticking to items kids put in their mouths.
Today's findings highlight the significant impact that fire retardancy laws can have on public health. Sadly, this is a lesson that our government hasn't adequately internalized. Instead, the shift away from PBDEs has occurred with little thought about the toxicity of replacement chemicals.
PBDE makers now sell a replacement fire retardant mixture that contains a brominated phthalate (some phthalates are potently toxic and were recently banned from kids' toys) and tris, a chemical that was banned from children's sleepwear in the 1970s due to cancer concerns. California advocates have pushed for the most toxic forms of fire retardants to be banned from new products, but they have not yet been successful at ensuring that our efforts to protect kids from one hazard don't inadvertently expose them to another.
Wondering what to do at home with all this info? Check out our quick tips for avoiding toxic fire retardants:
- Inspect foam items. Replace anything with a ripped cover or foam that is misshapen and breaking down. If you cannot replace these items try to keep the covers intact. Beware of older items like car seats or foam mattress toppers where the foam is not completely encased in a protective barrier.
- Use a vacuums fitted with a HEPA filter. These vacuums are more efficient at trapping small particles and will likely remove more contaminants and other allergens from your home. HEPA-filter air cleaners may also reduce particle-bound contaminants in your house.
- Wash your hands and your children's hands before eating. Try to keep kids from putting toys and electronic items in their mouths.
- Choose snug-fitting cotton PJs for kids. Although PBDEs were never used in clothing, other chemical fire retardants are used on synthetic (fleece) pajamas.
Photo by Bonnie Durrance
