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This summer, manufacturers recalled millions of toys because of dangerous lead paint, in what, unfortunately, turned out to be only the start of parents’ worries: Closer scrutiny of toys and other consumer’s products yielded countless subsequent news stories about lead, phthalates, and other hazardous chemicals that are linked to reproductive problems, learning disabilities, hormone problems, and cancer.
The federal government has been slow to address the threat. Illinois must take action now to protect children from toxic chemicals by passing the Child-Safe Chemical Act of 2008. The bill will:
- Protect children from lead, cadmium, and phthalates in products they use everyday.
- Provide parents with information to make safer product choices.
- Put Illinois on track to addressing the many other hazardous chemicals in consumer products.
Background
This summer’s, recalls of lead-contaminated jewelry and Hot Wheels were followed by a steady drumbeat of news coverage—totaling thousands of stories nationally—of toxics in baby bottle, children’s toys, home electronics and furniture, and prompted parents to question the health risks of supposedly benign children’s toys and expand their notion of pollution to include that which is deliberately added to consumer products.
In November Environment Illinois released the results of a biomonitoring which showed that the chemicals added to consumer products can end up as pollution in our bodies. The project which tested 35 volunteers, including 5 Illinoisans for contamination three types of chemicals—bisphenol A, phthalates, and PBDEs—in widespread use in consumer products like baby bottles, drinking straws, food cans, dental sealants, and home furnishings. We found at three types of toxic chemical in every person we tested.
Sadly, it is infants, children and developing fetuses that are the most vulnerable and often the most exposed among us to toxic chemicals. Childhood development is a delicate biological process easily disrupted by toxic substances at low doses. Children have higher metabolic rates than adults, meaning they eat, drink, and breathe more per pound of body weight. The biologic systems that normally detoxify and excrete toxic chemicals may not be fully developed in babies. Children also tend to play and sit on the ground and put toys in their mouths.
As Illinois moves to protect its citizens from dangerous chemicals commonly in consumer products, we should focus first on our most vulnerable population—our children. We should protect children from neurotoxic lead and cadmium in toys, hormone-disrupting phthalates, used as plastic softeners in rubber duckies and teething rings, and bisphenol A, an estrogen mimicking chemical which leaches from polycarbonate baby bottles.
And since these important measures can only scratch the surface of protecting children’s health from the potential harm of tens of thousands of known toxic, likely toxic, and untested toxic chemicals still used in consumer products, we should empower regulators to respond to new scientific findings on the health harms of industrial chemicals. If the weight of evidence indicates a chemical is hazardous, manufacturers should, at a minimum, be required to disclose their use of it in consumer products.
With the federal government asleep at the wheel, Illinois must take action now to protect children from toxic chemicals by passing the Child-Safe Chemical Act of 2008.
