I have blogged before about children and the affects chemicals we expose them to every day may affect them. I am not talking about any unusual exposure, but just exposure to things like carpet cleaner, cell phones, and plastic. Think about how many different products we use today compared to what we used 20 years ago. Do you know how safe each product you use really is? Do you know what it is made of? It is a lot to think about.
There is a Senate subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health that is examining the chemicals we are exposed to every day. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a democrat from New Jersey, told the subcommittee this week that there are approximately 84,000 different chemicals used in objects we can come in contact with each day.
An even more alarming fact is that he said only about 1 percent of those chemicals have been tested to see if they are safe. Because these chemicals have not been tested for safety, Lautenberg said our children are basically being used as “virtual guinea pigs in an uncontrolled experiment.”
Why aren’t more of the 84,000 chemicals tested? Lautenberg said that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn’t allowed by law to draw strong lines between those chemicals that are safe and those that are toxic. In fact, only five chemicals have been banned by the EPA in the last 34 years.
To try to remedy this, Lautenberg has introduced legislation that would require the manufacturers of the chemicals to prove their products were safe before they could be released on the market.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is right on board with Lautenberg. She says that “everything from our cars to the cell phones we all have in our pockets are made with chemicals” and making sure these are safe for the public is one of her main priorities.
What keeps the manufacturers from revealing to the public if their products are safe or not? Jackson said the manufacturers claim confidentiality laws so they don’t have to reveal the safety information. She did note that if the new law was passed, it might hurt profitability of the manufacturers, but isn’t our safety worth it?