Protect Children-Pass the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA)
- da: Organic Consumer's Association- Appetite for Change Program
- destinatario: Congress Person of the United States
The nation's toxic chemical regulatory law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is in drastic need of reform. TSCA is widely regarded as the weakest of all major environmental laws on the books today.
When passed 1976, the Act declared safe some 62,000 chemicals already on the market, even though there were little or no data to support this policy. Since that time another 20,000 chemicals have been put into commerce in the United States, also with little or no data to support their safety.
The human race is now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals with little or no understanding of the consequences.
We are at a tipping point, where the pollution in people is increasingly associated with a range of serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer, to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility, and birth defects. Yet even as our knowledge about the link between chemical exposure and human disease grows, the government has almost no authority to protect people from even the most hazardous chemicals on the market.
Specifically, the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act:- requires that industrial chemicals be safe for infants, kids and other vulnerable groups;
- requires that new chemicals be safety tested before they are sold;
- requires chemical manufacturers to test and prove that the 62,000 chemicals already on the market that have never been tested are safe in order for them to remain in commerce;
- requires EPA to review "priority" chemicals, those which are found in people, on an expedited schedule;
- requires regular biomonitoring to determine what chemicals are in people and in what amounts;
- requires regular updates of health and safety data and provides EPA with clear authority to request additional information and tests;
- provides incentives for manufacturers to further reduce health hazards;
- requires EPA to promote safer alternatives and alternatives to animal testing;
- protects state and local rights; and
- requires that this information be publicly available.
Please contact your Congresspersons today and urge them to cosponsor the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act.
>>Learn MoreThe nation%u2019s toxic chemical regulatory law, The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is in drastic need of reform. Passed in 1976 and never amended since, TSCA is widely regarded as the weakest of all major environmental laws on the books today. KSCA represents the first effort to protect the public health through comprehensive chemical policy reform in more than 30 years.
When passed in 1976, TSCA declared safe some 62,000 chemicals already on the market, even though there were little or no data to support this policy. Since that time another 20,000 chemicals have been put into commerce in the United States, also with little or no data to support their safety. This shocking lack of modern scientific information is the direct result of current law that does not give the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to demand the information it needs to evaluate a chemical%u2019s risk or to take action to protect the public health.
TSCA is so deficient as a public health statute that EPA was unable to ban asbestos using the law, even though asbestos is perhaps the most potent cancer causing substance ever introduced into commerce and kills about 10,000 people per year. In the more than 30 years since TSCA was passed, EPA has evaluated the safety of just 200 out of 80,000 chemicals, and banned only five.
The Kid Safe Chemicals Act would remedy this situation by giving EPA the mandate to protect public health from chemical exposures, and the authority to get the job done. The bill puts the burden of proving chemical safety where it belongs, with the manufacturers, and makes available to the public a wealth of health and safety information used to make safety determinations. KSCA recognizes the magnitude of the task and sets priorities for action based on whether chemicals are found in people, with special priority for chemicals found in human umbilical cord blood.
Equally important, KSCA does not propose to invent new public health criteria, but instead adopts tough health standards that chemical manufacturers already comply with for other products like pesticides and food additives, and applies these same standards to industrial chemicals that also end up in people.
I urge you to please cosponsor The Kid Safe Chemicals Act. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
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