Demand Chemical Safety That Protects Public Health Not Industry ProfitsFrom the cancer risks from formaldehyde found in your floor cleaner to the health risks from phthalates found in your food storage containers, under-regulated chemicals can pose safety hazards to you and your family. And those are just two of the thousands of under-regulated chemicals that are in our everyday products. We need to reform our broken chemical safety policy—and now is the time to achieve much stronger protections. Currently, less than one percent of the 84,000 chemicals registered for use in products in the United States have actually been reviewed as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) chemical safety program since its creation in 1976. Almost 40 years later, the House and Senate are working to fix this outdated, unsafe system and are in the process of combining their differing bills to make the final law to improve chemical safety for the country. This is our last chance to urge Congress to make the strongest chemical safety reform possible. A handful of Congress members are negotiating the final protections right now—we want to make sure they pass real reform of our chemical safety system that leads with science. Urge congressional leaders to pass the strongest bill possible to guarantee real protection for public health ahead of industry profits. It's no coincidence that it's taken this long to improve the chemical safety system. Industry giants such as Dow Chemical, DuPont, and 3M have recently spent more than $11 million dollars a year to lobby for lax rules that will mean "business as usual" for them at the expense of public health. Our legislators must listen to American families, not industry lobbyists, while they work to improve chemical safety. Tell these congressional leaders to pass a bill that truly protects the public from toxic chemicals. The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading U.S. science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in Berkeley, Chicago and Washington, D.C. To subscribe or visit go to: http://www.ucsusa.org |