Yesterday I took the fight for safer chemicals to the streets. Well, not exactly to the streets. I took it to the Safeway store in Silver Spring, Maryland, with my friend Laura MacCleery, of the blog Laura’s Rules.
That’s because we joined with a national campaign called Mind the Store. We are asking the nation’s top retailers to remove from their shelves the Hazardous 100+–over one hundred chemicals linked to a wide range of health issues, including hormone disruption, cancer, birth defects, and reproductive damage.
These chemicals, identified by the Environmental Protection Agency, the European Chemicals Agency, and several state health agencies, and compiled by national coalition (and Moms Clean Air Force partner) Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, can be found in ordinary consumer products. And I mean ordinary. Things like furniture, cleaning products, food cans, toys, bed linens, cookware, and particle board, to name a few.
Given the potential of these Hazardous 100+ chemicals to cause serious health problems, I’d rather not have my children breathe, ingest, spread on their skin, or otherwise be exposed to them, thank you very much. I’m guessing you feel the same way about your own children. But it’s surprisingly difficult to keep the Hazardous 100+ out of our children’s bodies.
That’s because of an outdated federal law that (very weakly) regulates chemicals in consumer products. The law is so weak that chemicals are not tested for human health hazards before being allowed on the market, and chemical manufacturers may keep secret, even from government regulators, the majority of the ingredients in their chemical formulations.
The way things currently stand, if I want to avoid having my children exposed to potentially toxic chemicals, I have to launch a major research project when I go to the store. It would be a pretty reasonable task, actually, if I had a doctorate in toxicology. But I don’t.
I think it’s time to take this ridiculous burden off the shoulders of concerned moms and dads, and place it back where it belongs: on the manufacturers of our products.
Among other things, it’s just too much information, and too many products, for any regular mom to keep track of. You should have seen Laura and me, both moms of young children, in the aisles of our local Safeway yesterday. We did find some products that contain the Hazardous 100+, such as Dial’s Hello Kitty hand sanitizer, with triclosan, and several body lotions with parabens. But there were many more products whose ingredients we didn’t understand or couldn’t find listed at all. We felt lost in a thicket of chemical names, tiny fonts on tiny labels, and terms we didn’t understand. Not to mention scores of products with no labeling information whatsoever.
It was pretty much an on-the-ground affirmation of the fact that consumers can’t shop their way around this problem. There’s so much information we just don’t have, and the information we do have is difficult to navigate. That’s why it’s time for retailers to get tough on toxic chemicals.
We met with store manager David, told him about our concerns, and delivered a letter asking Safeway to remove the Hazardous 100+ from its shelves. He was as nice as could be, and listened carefully to our concerns. He even let us take this photo of him receiving the letter from Laura.
Thanks, David, for receiving our letter and hearing us out. We can’t wait to hear back from Safeway about its plans to address toxic chemicals. As you’ll learn from Lori at Groovy Green Living, Katy at Non-Toxic Kids, Flour Sack Mama, and others, awesome moms around the country are delivering similar letters to all of the nation’s top 10 retailers: Safeway, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, CostCo, CVS, Kroger’s, Lowes, Home Depot, and Walgreens. We’re asking them to Mind the Store by taking the Hazardous 100+ off their shelves.
It’s a very exciting time in the fight for safer chemicals. Just this week, Senator Lautenberg introduced the Safe Chemicals Act, which would fix many of the problems in the current chemical law. We will continue to ask Congress to pass the Safe Chemicals Act.
If past behavior is any indication of future performance, the chemical industry is getting ready to do a lot of whispering in the ears of Senators. Let’s make sure moms’ voices come in loud and clear.