Melissa Wolfe has two children born with special needs that may be linked to environmental pollution, and she worries about flame retardants in her home. She said, “One of my sons is a thumb sucker, and this makes me nervous about what he is putting in his mouth.”
In a small victory for chemical safety advocates, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to investigate 24 common flame retardants found in common household items, including furniture and children’s toys.
The investigation is the result of more than a decade of lobbying by the environmental and health communities, who have long highlighted peer reviewed research, including a prominent study from the University of California, that explicitly links flame retardant chemicals to cancer, neurological and brain development disorders. Other studies have linked exposure to attention disorders and symptoms thought to be associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
The prevalence of flame retardants in home products has been an issue since the 1970s, when legislation was passed in California that required the use of such chemicals to slow the rate of house fires. Bound to adhere to California’s standards, the industry began applying the chemicals to their products — from couches to baby cribs.
In 2012, 41 percent of couches tested in the U.S. contained a flame retardant pentaBDE, which is banned throughout the world, according to a study published in Environmental Science and Technology.
“The problem is that these chemicals leak from the couches and different products in our homes into the air, and then into our bodies,” Lindsay Dahl, deputy director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, told Mint Press News.
Dahl is particularly worried about exposure to toddlers, as they tend to be more inclined to absorb the toxic chemicals. One study out of the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health indicated children in the state’s Salinas Valley were contaminated with seven times the amount of flame retardant chemicals than their peers in Mexico. Their rates of exposure compared with their mothers were three times higher.
While most children exposed to flame retardants do not exhibit symptoms initially, Dahl said that doesn’t mean they won’t fall to the consequences down the road.
“If someone develops cancer later in life, it’s hard to pinpoint what causes it — there’s diet, nutrition, genetics and environment. But that doesn’t dismiss the fact that peer reviewed studies surrounding the evidence is very strong,” she said.
Overhauling the system
Dahl, who works in Washington, D.C., has served as an advocate for the fight to limit the use of flame retardant chemicals in everyday products. She sees the EPA’s announcement to review the top flame retardant chemicals as a step in the right direction, but highlights the need for Congressional action before regulations can be applied.
“This is a really good first step, but if they find that a certain chemical is really, really harmful and that we should reduce our exposure, under existing laws they don’t have the power to do that,” Dahl said.
If the EPA’s review confirms the chemicals to be potentially harmful to human health, which environmental and health advocates predict will happen, the chemical industry could continue to produce, market and sell their products without oversight. That’s why Dahl and others are pushing for the Safe Chemicals Act, initially introduced last year by Sen. Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey.
The Safe Chemicals Act lays out the framework needed to ban chemicals from the market. In 2011, the bill was introduced and made its way out of committee. Now, with new Congressional makeup, Dahl is expected to reintroduce the bill, in the hopes of it passes before or shortly after the EPA’s review.
If passed, the Safe Chemicals Act will mandate the chemical industry to provide information on the safety of their chemicals — if they don’t, they run the risk of having their items pulled from the market.
In terms of flame retardant chemicals, under the Act the EPA would be required to reduce exposure to such chemicals, along with lead, mercury and other toxic chemicals, according to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.
The industry responsible for the creation and marketing of flame retardant chemicals has fired back since the introduction of the bill, claiming its products are safe, based on corporate-funded research. The industry’s lobbyists have spent more than $23 million in the last five years to limit movements for stricter standards, according to Environmental Health News journal.
The American Chemistry Council is considered top dog, serving as the leading trade association for the chemical industry. Since the introduction of The Safe Chemicals Act, it has been working furiously to block the bill, Dahl said.
Despite battling an industry worth $760 billion, Dahl said she’s confident Congress will hear the growing concern among the American public.
“I think Congress realizes that millions of Americans are concerned about this issue and want protection,” she said. “I’m confident that, even though the industry is big and strong and they’re trying to block reform, I have faith in the health community and Americans at large.”
Origin, health impacts
An investigative Chicago Tribune report published in 2012 links the origin of the flame retardant industry to the tobacco industry. Tasked with creating a cigarette that would be considered “fire safe,” the tobacco industry turned to the chemical industry. While the use of flame retardants didn’t fly in the tobacco world, there was a “need” in the furniture world.
Sold as a necessity to combat home fires, the legislation mandating the use of the toxic chemicals in American furniture was passed in California in 1975, instituting a nationwide movement among manufacturers to include the chemicals.
Shortly after the law was passed, flame retardants were removed from the content of children’s pajamas, after a University of California, Berkeley, study discovered the TDCPP flame retardant caused DNA mutations. Yet, it continued to be used in household products.
In a 2012 study by the University of California-Berkeley and Duke University, it was discovered that 85 percent of couches tested were treated with flame retardants. Of those tested, 41 percent contained TDCPP, the same chemical banned in the 1970s from pajamas over health concerns.
Other chemicals found in the furniture were noted in the study as being “associated with hormone disruption, neurological and reproductive toxicity and/or cancer in hundreds of animal studies and a number of human studies.”
Those chemicals eventually make their way into the environment and into homes. Toddlers are seen as more susceptible to ingesting such chemicals, often because they’re lower to the ground.