May is a month focused on women—the month started out with Mother's Day, and the week of May 8 is National Women's Health week, established to empower women to make their health a top priority.

Toxic chemicals are an increasingly important topic with women's health—too much chemical exposure at the beginning of life, or during pregnancy, can cause adverse health effects for women and for their children.

This month, we are featuring women heroes: women who are strong advocates for reducing exposure to toxic chemicals. Three of the women are legislators, and one is a scientist. They are tied together in the hard work that they are doing in their field to make our world and our homes safer from toxic chemicals.

In choosing these women, it was overwhelmingly clear that it's possible to come from very different backgrounds and agendas and reach the same conclusion: that stronger policies to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals are necessary on a state and federal level, with bi-partisan support to protect the health of our families and the most vulnerable populations in our society.

We're excited to be welcoming the state of Montana to the Safer States Coalition.

Women's Voices for the Earth (WVE) is a national organization that works to eliminate toxic chemicals that impact women's health by changing consumer behaviors, corporate practices and government policies.

Founded in Montana in 1995, WVE has a strong presence in the "Big Sky" state, where they have successfully organized for policies that protect public health for 15 years.

"Women's Voices for the Earth has been working hard to raise awareness in Montana about toxic chemicals that impact human health for the last 15 years."

That the synthetic sex hormone BPA can be found in baby bottles and some water bottles is well known. State and federal legislation, actions by state attorneys general, and market forces have been engaged in the effort to get BPA out of baby bottles.  But soda cans have escaped similar scrutiny.  Until now.  Tests performed by Health Canada, a government agency, confirmed BPA is found in soda cans, according to a report in the Globe and Mail.

BPA is found in the lining of soda cans, which keep soda from coming in contact with metal; infant formula cans and most food cans are lined with BPA as well.  Nineteen states have pending legislation to regulate BPA.