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Green Moms Carnival Says: Prevent It, Already!

Every month a few of this country's impressive green mom bloggers identify a single topic to write about, each on their own blogs but (thankfully) posted all in one place as the Green Moms Carnival. It's a great way to keep tabs on what this community of thoughtful, informed mothers are thinking on the important environmental issues that affect our families. In past months, they have written about topics such as greening our schools, combating holiday commercialism, and global warming, to name a few.

This month's topic is of special interest here at EWG since they tackled the novel concept of prevention in U.S. environmental policy, the logical but oft-overlooked notion of first doing no harm. These well-spoken environmentalists each write a letter to President-Elect Obama, encouraging him to take the leap and adopt a prevention-based environmental policy agenda. Diane of Big Green Purse fame even started an online forum called The Prevention Agenda, where citizens can share ideas about preventing toxic exposures, pollution, and global warming.

All of the letters are interesting, perhaps especially so for policy and law makers who should be gauging the mood and needs of their constituents. As a mom of two young kids who sees the Kid Safe Chemicals Act as our best chance to inject an ounce of prevention into our currently abysmal chemical policies, I was drawn to the letters that focused on the need for chemical policy reform, as Enviroblog readers might also be.

Anna Hackman at GreenTalk, for example, has this to say:

Mr. President-Elect, we need to stop the exposure of toxic chemicals by updating the 1976 Toxic Substance Chemical Act (TSCA). A law that grandfathered 62,000 chemicals presumed to be safe... It is a re-run not worth watching.

Please explain to me why manufacturing companies are not required to provide health and safety studies prior to chemicals coming onto the market? 20,000 new chemicals have come onto the market since TSCA was enacted. Enacting the Kid-Safe Chemical Act would "put the burden of proof on the chemical companies to prove that a chemical is safe before it is allowed on the market."

And Sommer Poquette of Green & Clean Mom also argued for Kid Safe. In her letter to President-Elect Obama she asks:

You have children. I have children. We have that common bond and wanting to keep them safe and healthy is certainly your priority and mine. When your wife was pregnant did you ever test her umbilical cord for toxins after either of your daughters were born?

We didn't for my two children but if we had, we might have been surprised to find that there could have been over 300 industrial chemicals that were pre-polluting our babies in their safe wombs. Really who would think that a child is not safe inside their mother's womb?

Check it out. It's the Green Moms Carnival. You won't regret it.

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