Toxic Chemicals Bill in the House and Congress♠♦
The Environmental Working Group recently sent me the following email. If you are interested in getting involved in greening this planet, now is the time. Please sign the petition to get the the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act passed. If we are ever to save this planet and this species, we must reduce the number of chemicals that we are subjected to on a daily basis.
The toxics reform bill, H.R. 5820, the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act, has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Chairmen Waxman (CA-30) and Rush (IL-01). Toxics reform is now moving through both houses of Congress. It has never been more important for Congress to know that we want the strongest and most effective toxics bill possible — we need companies to prove that chemicals are safe before they hit our supermarket shelves.
95,000 EWG Action Fund supporters like you have already called on Congress to enact change — and we’ve got Washington’s attention. Now, in this crucial moment of introduction, we need to reach 100,000 signatures to make sure our legislators make this bill strong and effective.
We’re just 5,000 signatures away, and we need you to add your name right now.
Click here to sign our petition urging Congress to support this critical reform.
This reform is long overdue. In May, the President’s Cancer Panel released a new report on exposure to chemicals and the risk of developing cancer. While their findings may be nothing new to you and me — especially that children are more susceptible than adults to carcinogens and endocrine disruptors — it is a clear call to Congress to take action now.
The nearly 300 chemicals that EWG found when testing the umbilical cord blood of 10 Americans — chemicals like BPA, lead, mercury, fire retardants, perchlorate and PCBs — are increasingly linked to serious long-term health effects, from childhood cancer and autism to ADHD, learning deficits, infertility and heart disease.
It’s time for a policy that is prevention oriented instead of reactionary. We are so close to our goal of 100,000 petition signatures. Will you help put us over the edge so we can show the House there is strong public support for this reform?
Click here to sign our petition urging Congress to support toxic chemical reform.
Thank you for speaking up for a new national chemical policy that places human health front and center — right where it should be.
Sincerely,
Ken Cook
President, EWG Action Fund
July 27, 2010
Tags: ADHD, environment, environmental working group EWG, learning deficits, toxic chemicals, Toxic Chemicals Safety Act, toxins in babies Posted in: Environmental Causes
2 Responses
The potential for TSCA reform is quite exciting, but it should be done in a way that doesn’t sacrifice millions of animals (for toxicity testing) in the name of better protection for human health and the environment. The revised bill needs to mandate and create market incentives to use nonanimal methods and tests.
I agree that we should use the latest science to assess chemicals. Instead of poisoning animals and attempting to apply that data to humans — which hasn’t worked out so far — we need to make sure a reformed TSCA relies on modern human cell and computer-based methods that provide more accurate data on how a chemical acts on cells and what the impact on human health may be.
Excellent point Rihana. Thanks for pointing that out. We wouldn’t want to create one problem while we solve another problem.
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