U.S. industries manufacture and import approximately 75,000 chemicals, 3,000 of them at over a million pounds per year. Studies show that hundreds of industrial chemicals circulate in the blood of a baby in the womb, interacting in ways that are not fully understood. Many more pollutants are likely present in the womb, but test methods have yet to be developed that would allow health officials to comprehensively assess prenatal exposure to chemicals, or to ensure that these exposures are safe. From a regulatory perspective, fetal exposure to industrial chemicals is quite literally out of control.
The reason: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the nation's notoriously weak chemical safety law. TSCA deprives the EPA of the most basic regulatory tools. The vast majority of chemicals in use today do not have anywhere near sufficient data needed to assess their safety, particularly their safety for the unborn baby or young child. Under TSCA, however, the EPA cannot require this data as a condition of continued chemical use. Instead, the EPA must negotiate with industry or complete a formal "test rule" for every study that it needs, for every chemical on the market. Consequently, very few high quality toxicity tests are conducted.<>
This would mean transforming TSCA into a true public health and environmental law, with the following core provisions. A new TSCA would:
•Require chemical manufacturers to demonstrate affirmatively that the chemicals they sell are safe for the entire population exposed, including children in the womb. In the absence of information on the risks of pre-natal exposure, chemicals must be assumed to present greater risk to the developing baby in utero, and extra protections must be required at least as strict as the 10 fold children's safety factor in FQPA.
•Require that the safety of closely related chemicals, such as the perfluorochemicals used to make Teflon and other stain-resistant and water repellant products, be assessed as a group. The presumption would be that these chemicals have additive toxicity unless manufacturers clearly prove otherwise.
•Grant the EPA clear and unencumbered authority to demand all studies needed to make a finding of safety and to enforce clear deadlines for study completion.
•Remove from the market chemicals for which tests demonstrating safety are not conducted.
•Eliminate confidential business protection for all health, safety, and environmental information.
•Require that material safety data sheets provided to workers contain the results of studies conducted under these provisions.
•Provide strong incentives for green, safer chemicals in consumer products and industrial processes.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/part4.php
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