The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • May - August 2012 • Page 34
GREEN LIVING
Designing Our Stuff As If Our Health Matters
By Tracey Easthope, M.P.H.
Each of us carries industrial chemicals in our bodies, in tissue, bone, blood, breast milk, semen, even in exhaled air. Pregnant women and developing babies in the womb are routinely exposed to hundreds of these chemicals. The mixture is unique to each of us: no one has your particular fingerprint of exposures. The production and use of industrial chemicals has skyrocketed since World War II. Their use is so widespread that synthetic chemicals now contaminate all global ecosystems and can be found in our food, drinking water, household dust, and in us. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly monitors over two hundred environmental chemicals in a representative sample of Americans and finds widespread exposure to pesticides, plasticizers, flame retardants, tobacco smoke, and metals. Our exposures differ depending on our occupation; whether we live in a highly polluted community; what we eat; and how we live — but we all carry this load.
It is a widely held myth that manufacturers have to do extensive safety testing before introducing chemicals into the products we buy. They don’t have to, and most won’t disclose the chemicals in their products. We know from animal experiments, and from some human data, that industrial chemicals can increase the risk of common diseases and conditions. The rates of some cancers rose in the last two decades, including kidney, liver, thyroid, esophageal, and testicular cancer in men; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, melanoma, and cancers of the thyroid, liver, and kidney in women; and childhood cancers, especially leukemia and brain cancer. The strength of evidence linking environmental exposures to these cancers varies from limited to strong. Recently, the President’s Cancer Panel summarized its investigation into the evidence linking environmental chemicals to cancer, and concluded that, despite remaining uncertainties, the contribution to cancer has been grossly underestimated, and that we know enough to act. It’s not just cancer. The scientific literature identifies more than one hundred industrial chemicals — many of which are commonly found in the workplace and home — known to affect the human brain and nervous system, causing memory, cognitive, and functional symptoms. An extensive 2008 review concludes common chemicals like lead, other heavy metals, PCBs, particulate air pollution, solvents, and some pesticides can increase the risk of neurodegenerative disorders, including cognitive decline, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease. We know that hundreds of chemicals can exacerbate asthma and may be implicated in its cause. And, of course, people are exposed to chemicals, and people differ in important ways that can influence how chemicals behave in our bodies. We can be experiencing psychosocial stress or have poor nutrition, a compromised immune system, or a genetic predisposition to greater vulnerability. Scientists are beginning to use ecosystem models to understand how complex interacting factors, including chemical exposures, can lead to disease in humans.
We need to transform the design of chemicals and materials up front, before those chemicals are in widespread use. Yet, the federal government does not effectively regulate industrial chemicals. It is a widely held myth that manufacturers have to do extensive safety testing before introducing chemicals into the products we buy. They don’t have to, and most won’t disclose the chemicals in their products. A number of authoritative reports have documented that our chemical regulatory system is old, outdated, and never functioned properly to begin with. And this failure to regulate has meant there has been no incentive to innovate, so the domestic chemical industry hasn’t. But environmental health activists have a plan. They have been going directly to companies demanding they make products without harmful chemicals. Activists have convinced the electronics, building materials, health care, cosmetics, children’s products, automobile, and cleaning chemicals sectors, among others, to reformulate products using safer chemicals. Environmental groups are now doing their own chemical testing and telling the public about harmful chemicals in everyday products. One of the nation’s premier testing projects is located here in Ann Arbor, the Ecology Center’s HealthyStuff program, which provides a searchable database of chemicals of concern in consumer products. There’s been action in statehouses all over the country and in Congress too. In the past decade, over eighty chemical safety laws have been passed with an overwhelming margin of bi-partisan support in states including Michigan, even in a recession. Here in Michigan, we’ve passed laws restricting lead in children’s products, mercury, and some of the worst flame-retardants. Federal legislation has also been introduced again this year.
While the chemical industry would have us believe that such laws are antibusiness and anti-profit, plenty of progressive businesses understand that change is inevitable. A number of prominent business groups are now advocating for reasonable regulations on chemicals because they are concerned about the health, reputational, and business impacts if the products they use or sell contain toxic chemicals. If you make and design chemicals that are safer from the outset, you can actually cut the costs of regulation, hazardous waste storage and disposal, worker protection, health care costs, and future liabilities. That’s another prong in the plan to transform our economy so all of the “stuff” we use everyday is safe for people and the environment. We need to transform the design of chemicals and materials up front, before those chemicals are in widespread use. A set of ideas developed more than a decade ago provides the tools to do just that. Those ideas, called “The Principles of Green Chemistry,” are revolutionizing our approach to making things. The basic idea is simple: Make chemicals and materials that are safe for health and the environment using the safest raw materials, and the safest and least energy intensive processes. The revolution will only be as good as science education and business implementation. Science teachers at all levels are starting to teach these principles, including those at all of the major research institutions in Michigan. But we are far from integrating these principles into science education across the board. The most innovative businesses have started to adopt these principles too, but still, too many lag behind.
The nation’s first state-level Green Chemistry Executive Directive…included an award for the design of safer chemicals and materials, and celebrated Michigan companies, educators, and activists driving this change. And we’ve started to see the change. Michigan was ahead of the curve when the governor signed the nation’s first statelevel Green Chemistry Executive Directive in October 2006. The directive included an award for the design of safer chemicals and materials, and celebrated Michigan companies, educators, and activists driving this change. And we’ve started to see the change. Nearly every Ford vehicle coming off the line these days has a soybeanbased foam seat. The soybeans are farmed in the United States replacing three million pounds of petroleum every year. A large auto supplier developed a safer chemical used in Michigan assembly plants to paint cars — it’s made out of old lobster, crab, and shrimp shells. This replaced a chemical that was a suspected carcinogen. And KTM Industries in Lansing is making packing materials for Volvo out of cornstarch, from U.S. grown corn. This packing material can be composted after use. Beyond the auto industry, Wayne State University has developed a novel way to create biodiesel cost-effectively from used cooking oil. A Detroit firm is using soybeans and old tires to make new heating and ventilation seals. University of Michigan researchers developed a process to make a high production chemical without the use of hazardous chemicals, replacing them with water. Michigan-based Herman Miller is a leader in sustainable furniture manufacturing and Michigan State University opened the Bioeconomy Institute in 2009 to incubate new Michigan businesses in bio-based chemicals and materials. Many manufacturers of children’s products, from infant car seats to toy manufacturers, have removed lead and other hazardous chemicals from their products. Even Walmart implemented a plan to reduce hazardous chemical usage. While we haven’t arrived yet — the next step will be to develop materials using agricultural waste products farmed sustainably — the changes are important and encouraging. All of this change is driven by small actions by lots of people. You can get involved by joining the Michigan Network for Children’s Environmental Health (www.mnceh. org), a coalition of environmental, faith, health professional, and health-affected groups working for change in Michigan. You can write to companies that make your favorite products asking them about their commitment to Green Chemistry and sustainability. You can research products using the Ecology Center’s HealthyStuff.org website before you buy them and then take action. You can ask the science teachers you know if they are teaching the Principles of Green Chemistry. In twenty years of advocacy on this issue, things have never looked this promising. There is momentum to transform our economy so that it is safe for everyone — not just for consumers and communities — but also for workers all over the world who make the products we use every day. ### Tracey Easthope, M.P.H., is the director of the Environmental Health Project at the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor.