Testimony to Congress affirms need for federal chemical reform

A Congressional hearing about the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) explored the gaps in the 33-year old statute that prevent the U.S. from having an effective chemical safety policy. 

A number of speakers from the environmental health and justice movements were invited to present testimony to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer protection on Feb. 26.

SaferStates has excerpted key pieces of the testimony presented from four distinguished panelists. Complete copies of prepared testimony can be found on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s website.

Cecil D. Corbin-Mark (pictured), Deputy Director/Director of Policy Initiatives for WeAct for Environmental Justice;

Richard A. Denison, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund;

Maureen Swanson, Healthy Children Project Coordinator for the Learning Disabilities Association of America;

Michael J. Wright, Director of Health, Safety and Environment for the United Steelworkers

Cecil D. Corbin-Mark

I live and work in Harlem, New York and my family has lived in the same neighborhood for about eight decades. The communities that I work in West, Central and East Harlem and Washington Heights covers an area of 7.4 square miles and is home to 650,000 mostly low to mid-income African-Americans and Latinos. Known for its richly diverse population and cultural history, the area also bears disproportionate rates of disease, air pollution and toxic exposures. Northern Manhattan leads the nation in asthma hospitalizations, low birth weight and lead poisoning to name a few. Diabetes and obesity are also raging epidemics in our communities.

While I am describing my hometown, I could in many ways be talking about places in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Florida or Louisiana. The combination of poor health outcomes and negative socio-economic factors make Harlem and Washington Heights, and the many places like it across this great nation, ill equipped to handle the toxic chemical exposures they face because our chemical regulatory system is broken. 

Richard A. Denison, Ph.D.

For drugs and pesticides (which are regulated under different laws) to enter or stay on the market, their producers have the burden of providing to the government information sufficient to demonstrate their safety.  Yet for chemicals subject to TSCA, the opposite is true:  When it grandfathered in the tens of thousands of chemicals that were on the market at the time it was passed – and which still today constitute the vast majority of chemicals in use – TSCA granted each of them a strong “presumption of innocence" by not requiring them to be tested or shown to be safe.  Under TSCA, EPA – and, hence, the public – shoulders the burden of proof.
 
In what amounts to a classic Catch-22, EPA must already have information sufficient to document potential risk or extensive exposure in order to require a company to test its chemical to determine whether there is actual risk.  This burden is so high that EPA has been able to require testing for only about 200 chemicals under TSCA.

Maureen Swanson

We focus our concerns on children because they are particularly vulnerable to toxic chemicals.  The CDC’s 2005 report on environmental exposure to chemicals shows that the youngest Americans sampled – ages 6 to 11 years old – often have higher levels of particular chemicals in their bodies than adolescents and adults. For their body weight, children consume more food, drink more water and breathe more air than adults.  Children spend a lot of time on the ground and put things in their mouths. Most importantly, the time from conception into early childhood is a period of rapid brain development.  We know that exposure to chemicals that are neurotoxins during early fetal development can harm the brain at doses much lower than those affecting adult brain function.

Some physicians now talk about autism and asthma as epidemics, based on the exponential increase in the numbers of children suffering from them.  Today, 1 in 150 American children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

For more than 30 years, TSCA has enabled the chemical industry to take risks with our children’s health that no parent would ever knowingly permit.  We urge Congress to reform TSCA without further delay, and provide all children the opportunity to lead healthier, fuller lives.

Michael J. Wright

I'm wearing a little lapel pin this morning. It’s a tiny birdcage, with a canary. Thousands of our members and many of our supporters wear them. It symbolizes what workers have become in relation to toxic chemicals. Before the invention of modern testing equipment, miners used to bring canaries underground. If the bird died, you knew something in the air was toxic and you got out. Today, we are the canaries in those cages. Others may testify this morning about bisphenol-A, phthalates, or carbon nanotubes. All of them may pose serious risks to consumers and communities, but the first to be exposed, and usually the highest exposed, are the workers who produce them and incorporate them into products. Most epidemiology regarding toxic substances uses cohorts of workers - in other words, it's our bodies that get counted in these retrospective human experiments.

I have great faith in the chemical industry. I actually believe all those Sunday morning commercials about the "human element" and the innovative potential of American chemistry. I believe we can produce chemical products that are safe to manufacture and safe to use. Thousands of our members work in the chemical industry. They want to make things that are safe for them, safe for their kids, and safe for the planet. They know that in the long run, their jobs depend on that as well. The critical first step is the reform of our basic chemical safety law - the Toxic Substances Control Act.