Eight days after chemical industry lobbyists met with Obama administration officials, federal regulators delayed action on including bisphenol A in a new effort to better regulate dangerous chemicals.

Read more:
Regulator waffles on bisphenol A.

It has been nearly a year since S. C. Johnson & Son agreed to begin disclosing all the ingredients in its home-cleaning and air-care products sold in the U.S. And earlier this month, a lawsuit with the aim of forcing other cleaning-product manufacturers to do the same inched closer to resolution.

Continued here:
Good chemistry for some household sprays.

From Wired.com:

Ever wonder what makes your cell phone ring? We’re talking hardware, not incoming calls. That tiny device puts a periodic table’s worth of elements in your pocket. We dissected a Sony-Ericsson W300 — and tracked down where its contents likely originated.

From Ms Magazine:

That lipstick or nail polish you may be wearing — are they a danger to your health? How about your deodorant, toothpaste, body lotion, soap?

Seemingly innocuous personal-care products contain a host of largely unregulated chemicals and toxic ingredients. Some of those chemicals — phthalates, formaldehyde, petroleum, parabens, benzene and lead — have been variously linked to breast cancer, endometriosis, reproductive disorders, birth defects and developmental disabilities in children.

Women and girls should be particularly concerned, as our bodies are uniquely susceptible to certain environmental chemicals. Women have a greater percentage of fat in comparison to men, so fat-soluble chemicals such as parabens and toluene tend to be more readily absorbed and fatty breast tissue can be a long-term storage site for some of the more persistent toxic chemicals. Hormones also play a role: Synthetic chemicals such as alkylphenols (found in some detergents) and bisphenol A (found in hard plastics) can mimic natural estrogens in the body — and excess estrogen can play a role in the development of breast cancer. Childbearing women may also pass toxins to fetuses in utero or to newborns when breastfeeding.

But U.S. consumers are left in the dark about vital safety information: Cosmetic companies are not required to label many of their products’ ingredients, and the Food and Drug Administration does not mandate premarket safety testing of those ingredients.

And that’s why the California Safe Cosmetics Act is such a landmark achievement.

Signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last October and taking effect in 2007, it requires manufacturers to disclose product ingredients found on state or federal lists of chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects. The law further authorizes the state to investigate the health impacts of chemicals in cosmetics, and requires manufacturers to supply health-related information about their ingredients. Finally, the act enables the state to regulate products in order to assure the safety of salon workers.

California is the first state in the nation to pass such legislation, thus serving as a model for the other 49.

By LIBBY QUAID AP Food and Farm Writer

WASHINGTON Apr 11, 2006 (AP)— Two soft-drink companies were sued Tuesday by parents complaining that there might be cancer-causing benzene in kids’ drinks.

Attorneys filed class-action lawsuits against the companies in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston and Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee, Fla. They accused Polar Beverages Inc. and In Zone Brands Inc. of not taking steps to keep benzene from forming in their beverages.

Benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia, can form in soft drinks containing two ingredients: Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate.

The presence of those ingredients doesn’t mean benzene is present. Scientists say factors such as heat or light exposure can trigger a reaction that forms benzene in the beverages.

“It’s impossible for parents to know which soft drinks are safe and which contain cancer-causing benzene,” said Timothy Newell, one of the plaintiffs.

Link

New York Times:

By Melanie Warner

WHEN Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team’s seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages.

Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide. And Dr. Soffritti’s study concluded that aspartame may cause the dreaded “c” word: cancer.

The research found that the sweetener was associated with unusually high rates of lymphomas, leukemias and other cancers in rats that had been given doses of it starting at what would be equivalent to four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person. The study, which involved 1,900 laboratory rats and cost $1 million, was conducted at the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences, a nonprofit organization that studies cancer-causing substances; Dr. Soffritti is its scientific director.

The findings, first released last July, prompted a flurry of criticism from the Calorie Control Council, a trade group for makers of artificial sweeteners that has spent the last 25 years trying to quell fears about aspartame. It said Dr. Soffritti’s study flew in the face of four earlier cancer studies that aspartame’s creator, G. D. Searle & Company, had underwritten and used to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for human consumption. “Aspartame has been safely consumed for more than a quarter of a century and is one of the most thoroughly studied food additives,” read one news release from the council.

At the same time, Dr. Soffritti’s findings have energized a vociferous group of researchers, health advocates and others who say they are convinced that aspartame is a toxin associated with a variety of health troubles, including headaches, dizziness, blindness and seizures.

Link

Part one of a three part series
Douglas Fischer – STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area

In a pioneering study, we tested a Bay Area family for a suite of chemical pollutants. The results stunned even scientists.

A casual observer of Rowan Hammond Holland sees a little towhead, devilishly cute, who grins impishly while tossing food at the family dog.

A pediatrician sees a kid who’s a bit small for his age: 30-odd inches tall, 22 pounds, about 10th percentile for 20-month-old boys.

But not even his mother could guess what’s in his blood: flame retardants, at concentrations higher than measured almost anywhere in the world for someone not handling the stuff for a living.

He’s a typical kid from a typical family, picked for an Oakland Tribune investigation of chemical pollutants in our bodies.

The surprising result, scientists say, suggests infants and toddlers have vastly higher levels of some chemical pollutants than health officials suspect — or even consider safe.

But no one can say. Rowan is the only toddler, at least in the United States, who’s been tested for such things, despite evidence these compounds taint our blood, our food, our house dust, our kids.

This is our “body burden” our chemical legacy, picked up from our possessions, passed to our children and sown across the environment. It’s the result, scientists say, of 50 years of increasing reliance on synthetic chemicals for every facet of our daily lives.

Only recently have regulators grasped its scope. Health officials have yet to fully comprehend its consequence.

We are all, in a sense, subjects of an experiment, with no way to buy your way out, eat your way out or exercise your way out. We are guinea pigs when it comes to the unknown long-term threat these chemicals pose in our bodies and, in particular, our children.

In the first study of its kind, Rowan and his family had their blood, hair and urine tested for a suite of chemical pollutants thought to be ubiquitous in our environment.

The tests showed PCBs, plasticizers, mercury, lead and cadmium in each family member. Chemicals used to make Teflon and GoreTex contaminated their blood. Mikaela, Rowan’s 5-year-old sister, had more dibutyl phthalate — a plasticizer found in nail polish and cosmetics — in her urine than 90 percent of the 328 kids age 6-11 tested so far in the United States.

The shock was the family’s level of a class of flame retardants — polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs — used in everything from TV casings to rugs to foam cushions. In the United States, where levels are 10 to 100 times higher than the rest of the world, the average adult is thought to have 36 parts per billion in their blood.

A cocktail mixed at that concentration would have 36 drops of gin in a rail tank car of tonic. Rowan’s mom, Michele Hammond, had 138 ppb. His dad, Jeremiah Holland, 102. His sister, 490. And Rowan: 838 ppb. Scientists start to see behavioral changes in lab rats at 300 ppb.

“This is a very serious warning of very small children being heavily exposed,” said Aake Bergman, professor of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University in Sweden and one of the world’s foremost experts on human exposure to fire retardants. “We may have many more people being exposed at similar levels.” Proportions will vary, and indeed, a follow-up test of the Hammond Hollands found lower — but still alarming — PBDE levels in the children. A similar chemical stew can be found in every adult and child in the country, scientists say. The exposure comes courtesy of our lifestyle, in which synthetic chemistry imbues the modern world with convenience beyond that of any generation in history.

We make perfume from petroleum and preserve food in plastic. Our chances of dying in a building fire are almost nil. We clean bathrooms without scrubbing, spill coffee without worry of a stain.

Yet these modern wonders come with a price. As synthetic chemicals have saturated our lives, so too have they permeated our bodies.

We don’t know the effect it has on our health. But scientists do have suspicions.

Autism, once an affliction of 1 in 10,000 children, today is the scourge of 1 in 166.

Childhood asthma rates have similarly exploded. And one in 12 couples of reproductive age in the United States is infertile.

One may not cause the other; to draw such links remains, for now, beyond the grasp of science. Industry and other scientists say exposure remains well below levels considered harmful — the Hammond Holland’s numbers notwithstanding. Our ability to detect these compounds, invisible even five years ago, has outstripped our ability to interpret the results.

Publishing body burden data, in other words, does little but make people worry.

But if it was your 2-year-old, would you want to know?
Read more

Source: ENN: Environmental News Network

August 10, 2005 — By United Steel Workers

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Citing growing public health concerns, the United Steelworkers (USW) union has informed major carpet cleaning retailers and wholesalers, fast food chains and major retail clothing companies that they may have “a legal duty to warn” their customers about potential harmful effects of products that may contain the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA or C8.

PFOA is used to manufacture DuPont’s widely used Teflon non-stick cookware. PFOA is also created when fluorotelomers — which are a family of stain and water resistant chemicals — break down. Fluorotelomers are applied to carpets, clothing, pizza boxes, hamburger wrappers and french fry containers. A recent draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board identified PFOA as a “likely human carcinogen.”

DuPont is the only known manufacturer of PFOA in the U.S.

The USW sent letters and information circulars to companies which may sell products containing PFOA or chemicals that break down into PFOA. The correspondence warns company officials that they may have a duty to inform customers of potential health risks associated with exposure to PFOA or they could face legal liability in the event that consumers sue and prove harm to their health.

Courts have found, according to the USW, “a duty to warn” exists where a manufacturer, distributor or retailer had knowledge of the health or safety risks of a product and consumers, due to a lack of warning, were harmed by a dangerous product.

The EPA has launched an investigation to determine if DuPont withheld important information concerning the health and environmental effects of PFOA. The Environmental Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a subpoena to DuPont about PFOA as part of a federal grand jury investigation.

“We sincerely hope that our efforts will encourage companies selling or distributing potentially carcinogenic products to provide warnings and thereby protect the public,” said Ken Test, chair of the USW DuPont Council.

Some recipients of the USW letters and information circulars include: Rug Doctor, Stanley Steemer, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, KFC, California Pizza Kitchen, Levi Strauss, GAP, W.L. Gore, Eddie Bauer, J. Crew, Wal-Mart, Sears, Nordstrom and Dillard’s.

The USW represents over 1,800 workers at DuPont. The union has expressed repeated concerns over worker exposure to PFOA and how DuPont may be endangering jobs by not dealing with the PFOA issue “in an open and responsible fashion.”

“DuPont has a special responsibility to its employees who produce PFOA and fluorotelomers and who may have the highest exposure to possible carcinogens,” said Test.

The union has also written to hundreds of paper companies in the United States expressing concern about another DuPont chemical, Zonyl, present in paper products used by the food industry. Zonyl is also believed to break down into PFOA.

According to a leading environmental organization, the Environmental Working Group, Zonyl may be a major source of how PFOA has entered the bloodstream of most Americans.

About the United Steel Workers
The USW is the largest industrial union in North American and has 850,000 members in the U.S. and Canada. Over 150,000 USW members work in the paper industry.

Contacts
Joseph Drexler
USW Strategic Campaigns
(615) 594-2074 (cell)

Robert Moore
Publicist
(202) 498-6054 (cell)

News-Medical.net:

In a new report scientists say that a chemical compound used to make Teflon, possibly causes cancer.

The report, which is still in draft, is written by the scientific advisory panel of the Environmental Protection Agency, and has identified perfluorooctanoic acid as a “likely carcinogen”.

The EPA has until now classified PFOA as a “suggested” carcinogen, and this demands fewer health precautions.

This latest information is significant because it will probably prompt agency officials for the first time to regulate the processing agent, PFOA.

A major investigation is presently underway by the EPA into how the compound, which is used to make stain and stick resistant surfaces and materials for products including Gore-Tex fabrics and pizza boxes, gets into consumers’ blood and if it affects their health.

The EPA is also demanding millions of dollars in fines from DuPont, the producers of PFOA, on the grounds that the chemical giant has neglected for two decades to report possible health and environmental problems associated with the compound.
Read more >>

SFGate.com: Women are taking environmental health into their own hands

Recent research has shown that phthalates, chemicals routinely used in body-care products, could harm developing fetuses and young children. (The effects on adult bodies are less clear but may include male-fertility problems.) Beyond simple questions of poisoning — the sort of tests the cosmetic industry usually looks at — exposure to small amounts of chemicals such as phthalates at just the right moment in development can lead to consequences decades later. Researchers point to the experience with DES, a synthetic estrogen prescribed to millions of pregnant women before it was banned in 1971. Horrifyingly, it turns out that the grown daughters of mothers prescribed DES are up to 40 times more likely to develop certain cancers, and often have complications in their own pregnancies. There is even evidence that a third-generation effect may exist.

Though many consumers have long had a visceral aversion to ingredients they can’t pronounce (say “THA-lates”), it is only recently that this kind of conventional wisdom has coalesced into a political movement. Last year, the European Union passed legislation requiring manufacturers to reformulate body-care products without potentially harmful chemicals. An effort to pass similar regulations in California stalled after vigorous lobbying by cosmetic companies. A new bill, sponsored by state Sen. Carole Migden, would require cosmetic companies to report the presence of chemicals such as phthalates that are known to cause cancer (they are often hidden under the rubric of fragrance).

Into the breach have stepped advocacy groups. The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group has created an online database that rates the ingredients of various personal-care products. Similarly, the Breast Cancer Fund’s Campaign for Safe Cosmetics asks companies to pledge to adhere to the European Union rules in their worldwide operations.

Some companies have been working to address these issues as well. Aveda, for example, is working with Greenpeace’s mercury-testing program; its training salons have proved the perfect place to collect hair samples. The company has also removed phthalates from all of its products, including packaging, says Mary Tkach, Aveda’s executive director of environmental sustainability. “We’re trying to be a different kind of company,” she says. “We have to really think ahead.” Still, inertia in the sector is difficult to overcome. Even some of Aveda’s products score poorly in the Environmental Working Group’s database, and the company has yet to sign on to the safe-cosmetics pledge. (Tkach says Aveda’s parent company — Estée Lauder, one of the companies lobbying against the Migden bill — won’t let the company sign the pledge.) But you don’t have to resort to dreadlocks and the makeup-free hippie look to avoid questionable chemicals in cosmetics. Better choices include companies such as Avalon, Aubrey Organics and more than a hundred others that have signed the Breast Cancer Fund’s pledge and are making alternative cosmetics widely available. And, as more women realize they need to educate themselves and make their own decisions about the toxins entering their bodies, these companies are poised to grow.
Read more >>