Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families

A national effort to protect families from toxic chemicals.

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Long-Awaited Legislation to Reform Federal Toxic Chemicals Policy to be Introduced This Week

Press Teleconference with Nation’s Leading Experts Offering Immediate Analysis, Thurs, April 15, 12:30pm EST (9:30am pst)

Washington, DC – On Thursday, April 15, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL) are expected to introduce long-awaited legislation to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Experts from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families – a coalition of over 200 organizations and 11 million individuals – will be offering immediate analysis on the science, politics, and implications for the chemical industry and consumer products.

Under the current law, the Environmental Protection Agency has required testing of only a few hundred of the 62,000 chemicals that have been on the market since TSCA was passed; the inventory has grown to 80,000 chemicals. Meanwhile autism, cancer, reproductive disorders, asthma and other health problems linked to such chemicals are on the rise.

Environmental and public health groups are hoping the upcoming legislation will:

  1. Require industry to prove that chemicals are safe before including them in products, workplaces, or being released into the environment;
  2. Allow the EPA to act quickly to phase out the most dangerous chemicals from commerce, including mercury, lead and brominated flame retardants; and
  3. Allow the EPA to consider cumulative exposure to chemicals, such as they are experienced in the real world, when evaluating chemicals for safety, as the National Academies of Sciences recommends.

WHAT: Press Teleconference featuring immediate analysis of long-awaited TSCA reform legislation, plus opportunity to ask questions about details & implications.

WHEN: Thursday, April 15, 12:30 – 1:30 pm est (9:30-10:30 am pst)

HOW: 800-256-8682 pw 1062

WHO:

  • Andy Igrejas, National Campaign Director, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
  • Richard Denison, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund
  • Maureen Swanson, Learning Disabilities Association of America
  • Alan Greene, M.D., Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine, and author, Raising Baby Green
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