Toxic chemical rules are on Brown's agenda

As Congress struggles to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, California in the next few months is expected to issue comprehensive rules curbing chemicals in consumer products such as toys, cosmetics and plastics.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will hold a hearing in Washington on the federal law with public health and industry witnesses, but the Republican takeover of the U.S. House makes it less likely that environmentalists will manage to toughen existing federal rules.

Under current law, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has required testing on just 200 of the nearly 80,000 existing chemicals, and restricted only five.

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families - a coalition of nearly 300 health groups - is urging federal restrictions on substances already known to be dangerous, including persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals. It wants the government to require that industry provide health and safety information for all chemicals in order for them to enter or remain on the market. And it wants a guarantee that peer-reviewed science - including the latest recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences - is used to assess risks.

Chemicals are more strictly regulated in Europe than in the U.S. and many international companies have  changed their products to conform to European Union rules. But the chemical industry is mounting ferocious opposition to stricter regulation in the U.S.

 In 2008, California enacted two groundbreaking laws to curb toxics in consumer products—one requiring the state to identify harmful substances and evaluate safer alternatives, and another to set up a database on the chemicals’ effects.

 That comprehensive approach was aimed at replacing the legislature's laborious and scattershot chemical-by-chemical legislation, which had become highly politicized.

But when the state issued regulations last June under the new laws, a coalition of chemical, automobile and other companies attacked them as too expensive, saying they would slow innovation. Car companies were particularly concerned about chemicals used to treat fabrics inside vehicles. Such chemicals off-gas that "new car smell"--which may not be healthy.

In November, California regulators withdrew their first proposed rules and published an industry-friendly version, narrowing the list of high-priority chemicals, lifting deadlines for action, diluting rules for independent verification, and exempting products with small amounts of toxics.

A coalition of 33 health and environmental groups cried foul and threatened to sue, whereupon the Schwarzenegger administration called a time-out, dropping the controversy into Brown’s lap.

“The governor should move with a tremendous sense of urgency.”Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los
Angeles), an author of the original "green chemistry" legislation, who backs the tougher version of the rules. “If we don’t act, some kids are going to get diabetes or cancer who would never have been susceptible.”

Feuer also makes an economic argument, noting that strict rules would “put California in the forefront of the global demand for less-toxic products.”

But business groups see green chemistry as an example of California-only regulations that will hamper the state’s competitive position, raise consumer prices and cost jobs.  " We remain cautiously optimistic that the final regulations will not present unmanageable costs for the state at a time of multibillion-dollar budget deficits and 12% unemployment, or create substantial new costs for the private sector," said Tim Shestek, Sacramento representative of the American Chemistry Council.

Along with toxics rules, the American Chemistry Council plans to fight any statewide curbs on plastic grocery bags—a priority for environmental groups.

Gov Jerry Brown has yet to name a new chief of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control who will oversee the administration's version of the green chemistry regulations.

The administration, which is preoccupied with finding a solution to the state's $25-billion budget deficit, will soon be forced to confront an array of controversial environmental and energy issues.

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--Margot Roosevelt

Photo: California last year adopted a law sponsored by Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) to ban sales of jewelry containing more than 300 parts per million of cadmium, a toxic metal, which is a known cancer-causing agent. Chinese manufacturers have begun substituting cadmium for lead in jewelry, some of which is made for children. A factory in Yiwu, China, is pictured here. Credit: Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press

2d photo: Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles). Credit: California Assembly

Comments

[Rachel]

Thank you for covering this very important issue. Both public health advocates and the chemical industry have called for federal reform of our failed chemical laws. It's disheartening to see the same industry trying to thwart important efforts at the state-level while Congress decides whether or not to act.

Governor Brown has a difficult road ahead to get California out of its current fiscal crisis, but let's hope he doesn't do it at great cost to public health and the environment. Thank you to Assemblyman Feuer for his leadership in protecting the next generation. Let's hope Governor Brown demonstrates the same commitment.

[Native Angeleno]

Beware, as in be aware of the hoax, that the Dems suddenly NOW want to pass all this very much needed health and safety legislation, but the damn Repubs have the other House, and they are thwarting us so! when they HAD both houses the prior two years, and a FILIBUSTER-PROOF Senate for many months, and tried and did NOTHING with it to resolve the problems they with the Repubs have created for us many years prior, but all of a sudden you're supposed to join in on the hoax and mutter how important it is the Dems MUST defeat the Repubs next time, etcetc, as if your memory is the size of a pea.

It's a dance designed to keep them dancing with each other, and not doing, much of what is important. TOGETHER, these two traitorous parties have ruined this country. Independents must be fielded and funded to replace the lot of em, newbies in govt who don't know the names of every lobbyist and their kids names and their dogs.

G-damn both parties.

[Mark]

With things stalled in Congress, it is up to California and other states to try to protect us from toxic chemicals, especially children and low-income people who are affected most. They shouldn't have products here that are more dangerous than those sold in Europe.

[Kimberly Inez McGuire]

Congratulations to all of the states tackling toxic chemicals to protect human health. Scientific evidence has linked many commonly used chemicals to a host of reproductive health problems, including infertility, miscarriage, and poor birth outcomes. We know that a woman’s exposures to chemicals can have lifelong consequences for her children, and even her grandchildren. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. State and federal laws governing chemicals in the U.S. (most notably the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act) are outdated, ineffective, and badly in need of reform. We must pass common-sense chemical policy reform to protect reproductive health and support every woman who decides to conceive and carry a pregnancy.

[Donna Ferullo]

The multifactorial evidence in the inception and modulation of autism begs a closer look at gene environment interactions and more careful consideration of the hundreds of chemicals to which the developing fetus and young child is exposed. We have little safety evidence on the health effects of thousands of chemicals now in the manufacturing channels, from baby bottles, baby lotions and rubber duckies to plywood in the nursery and flame retardants in the crib. Few have been tested for their effect on human health, fewer for their effect in combination, which is how we live in the real world, and a paltry number for their effect on the developing brain. No one knows the full impact of these exposures throughout the lifespan, but they are beginning to be implicated in the rising incidence of asthma, allergies and diabetes in childhood to fertility and autoimmune issues in adulthood, to the earlier onset of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease in later decades. Toxic chemical reform should protect the health of all Americans by requiring evidence of safety in critical developmental windows, in vulnerable populations, in manufacturing environments and in general public safety before permission to use a chemical is granted. We need to stop making public health a retrospective exposure study and exclude risks that should be well known by putting more resources into testing and less into the heartache and expense of chronic diseases.

Donna Ferullo
Director of Research Programs
The Autism Society

[stephenie Hendricks]

Thank you, Ms. Roosevelt for reporting on this important issue. It is a travesty that our failed chemical regulations on a federal level are forcing each state to come up with environmental health protections for their own citizens. Just today, Senator Mark Leno introduced important legislation to reform California's archaic regulations regarding flame retardant chemicals. These chemical industry influenced rules (wrought with tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and inaccurate advertising, including front groups created by PR firms) are a virtual mandate to have dangerous flame retardant chemicals in foam products made here in California - causing consumers to make sure they do not buy foam products from California! Governor Brown is wise to know that if California holds all of its residents to strong environmental health protections, that not only will we see less medical care expenses from illness linked to chemical exposure, but consumers will know that products made here are safe to buy.

[Sydney B.]

Thank you to Ms. Roosevelt and the LA Times for publishing this story! Our nation is in need of an overhaul of the current toxic chemicals law to stop diseases we know we can prevent with green chemistry and stronger, common-sense laws on the chemicals in everything from our cookware to our toys. Let's lead the way to a healthier nation, California!

[Daryl Ditz]

What a telling synopsis of the struggles that Californians, and all Americans, encounter in the simple pursuit of products without unnecessary toxic ingredients. In contrast to the overblown rhetoric of chemical industry lobbyists, states and countries that take bold steps on chemicals are enhancing their global competitiveness, while protecting public health. Who's not for that?

[Cindy]

As rates of cancer and other diseases linked to toxic chemicals, kudos to California for working to replace toxic hazards in everyday products with safer alternatives. But California-only? That's chemical industry spin. California is actually one of 30 states that have introduced proposals this year to phase out cancer-causing chemicals and others that contribute to chronic disease, consistent with modern science.