This morning, President Obama signed into law a bipartisan bill I wrote to reform our nation's chemical safety program and finally protect children and families in New Mexico and around the country from dangerous chemicals. It's a historic step for the health and safety of all Americans.
Most Americans believe that if they buy a product at the hardware store or the grocery store, the government has tested it and determined that it's safe. But that's not true.
For the past 40 years, the law we've had in place — the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) — has been completely broken. We're exposed to hundreds of chemicals in our daily lives. Nearly 1,000 chemicals go on the market each year. But only a handful have ever been reviewed for safety — out of the more than 85,000 in commerce.
As a result, we don't know the full impact these chemicals have on our health. Some found in common household items are toxic: flame retardants in your sofa, formaldehyde in pressed-wood floors and non-iron shirts, and BPA in your credit card receipts are just a few. Some have been linked to cancer, infertility, Parkinson's disease, birth defects, and other conditions and diseases. Infants, pregnant women, the elderly and workers exposed to chemicals on the job are particularly at risk.
That's why the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act is so important. The bill is named for the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, a champion for public health and safety who once said that reforming TSCA would do more to protect the health and safety of our kids and grandkids than anything he'd ever worked on.
The new law requires the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the most vulnerable people, and it gives the agency new authority to order testing and ensure chemicals are safe. For the first time, the EPA will be required to review new chemicals before they go on the market. The law provides the EPA with the resources to do its job, and requires industry to do its share to support the program. This is critical progress.
Over the years of working on this bill, I met many people who illustrated why reform was so important — such as Dominique Browning who works with Moms Clean Air Force. Dominique is a kidney cancer survivor. When she asked her doctor what caused her cancer, he said, "It's one of those environmental ones. Who knows? We're full of chemicals."
Another was Lisa Huguenin, a Ph.D. scientist who has done work on chemical exposure at Princeton and Rutgers universities. Lisa was motivated to fight for reform not just because of her work — but because her family has experienced health problems that could be linked to environmental chemicals, and she wants answers about what's in our environment. Her son was born with autism and auto-immune deficiencies, and her husband has undergone tests for a rare and newly discovered disease.
There are countless stories like theirs in communities all across New Mexico and throughout our country.
With the signing of this bill today, we finally have a cop on the beat. And I hope you'll join me in celebrating this tremendous progress to fix our broken system and finally protect our children and families from dangerous chemicals.
