The Uncontrolled Chemistry Experiment On Our Children

... and on us and future generations

Scientists say chemical pollution has now passed the safe limit for humanity.

First, some background on this important issue. In 2007, the European Union took the unprecedented step of beginning to register, evaluate, restrict and ban approximately 180,000 chemicals and their various combinations over the next eleven years in a program called REACH. Its stated goal: protecting human health and the environment from harmful chemicals.
On our side of the Atlantic, our Environmental Protection Agency has more than 85,000 chemicals listed on its inventory of substances that fall under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
When this Act was enacted in 1976, the law, mostly written by the chemical industry, presumed that those already on the market were safe, so 62,000 chemicals were exempted from any testing! According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the EPA has required testing for only about 200 of these chemicals. Bottom line: We don't know how dangerous they are, especially when typically in small quantities they accumulate in our bodies over time, a big factor in assessing chemicals and human health.
Out of the thousands that were designed to be toxic like pesticides and herbicides and the many others suspected of being carcinogenic and/or mutagenic, the CDC did a test in 2005 of only 148. They found the vast majority of a broad selection of Americans had almost all 148 in their blood! As Dr. Trasande now with NYU put it:
“We are the humans in a dangerous and unnatural experiment in the United States, and I think it’s unconscionable…Rates of asthma, childhood cancers, birth defects and developmental disorders have exponentially increased, and it can’t be explained by changes in the human genome. So what has changed? All the chemicals we’re being exposed to.”
In 2016, an updated Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, again exceedingly "friendly" to the industry, required the EPA to test these 85,000+ chemicals plus the roughly 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year but it had at least five loopholes.

With a backlog exceeding 100,000 and growing by 2,000 a year, within three and a half years after it became law, the EPA was required to have only 20 tests operating!
These tests could run for only 7 years which means no long-term, cumulative studies.
Moreover, industry had 5 years to comply after any new rule is made.
As a testament to the national power of the chemical industry, the Act prevents any state from being more protective of its residents than the EPA, once the EPA has made a decision on a particular chemical.
Most importantly, as Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group said, “The bill doesn’t provide EPA enough money to get through this enormous backlog of old, and in some cases, very dangerous chemicals ... It will take EPA decades to get through the thousand most dangerous chemicals that the EPA has said need urgent review.” Unfortunately, at this snail's pace, it will take decades and probably centuries to test the 10's of 1000's of other chemicals that might also be urgent but that we don't know about.

... Needs To Stop.

this "witch's brew" of untested chemicals is an unacknowledged but huge and growing Problem

This is our current plan, a work in progress open to your expert input, to mitigate this Uncontrolled Experiment, Without Our Permission, on Our Children and Us. It has five parts:

1. Ban and restrict the over 1300 chemicals Europe's REACH has already banned and restricted but which are still harming Americans.

2. Ban any other known carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, endocrine-disrupting and toxic chemicals that have immediately available alternatives in sufficient quantities to not be overly disruptive.

3. Ban, say in 3, 12, 24 months or other reasonably doable period by which healthy alternatives can be in place, any known carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine-disrupting, toxic or teratogenic chemical like the one that tragically caused little Carlos Candelario on the right to be born without arms and legs after his mother was exposed in a Florida field to a known teratogenic tomato pesticide.

... Before Other Huge Problems Like the World-Wide

... drop in sperm count and health make a surprise appearance

4. Implement the Petition's Plan to use industrial ecology to periodically figure what the true, long-term, overall costs to society, our children and the environment are of the various chemical families amongst our enormous backlog in a massive, crash test program.

a) This "full court press" involving the top 1000+ chemicals of most concern, would be led by government and government-paid labs, indirectly funded by the chemical industry through True Cost Transformation fees, current and retroactive, along with industrial ecologists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, agricultural scientists and other experts.

b) It would also be aided by universities, the International Chemical Workers Union Council, business, non- profits and citizen groups. Overall, as we envision it, it would go forward in an open, transparent, online/offline/all-media environment with an array of organizational and citizen-based checks, balances, rewards and penalties to ensure un-biased, uncorrupted, accurate data.

5. Then, during and after that process of figuring the Price of Chemicals That Tells the Social and Environment Truth, per the Petition's Plan, levy True Cost Transformation (TCT) fees on those chemicals not immediately banned, including some harmful costs previously foisted onto society, and do so at the most appropriate points of production and importation.

a) Afterwards, rebate those billions to help all workers in chemically polluting industries to get good-paying jobs installing, helping them start their own businesses installing, working in businesses that install or if need be, helping them move elsewhere to work in and/or start their own businesses installing solar, wind, insulation, weatherization, or

b) now detoxifying homes, workplaces, 45,000+ abandoned mines, 120,000+ orphan wells and 450,000+ abandoned brownfields suspected of having contaminated soil. Indeed, detoxifying might be for many very satisfying work.

c) Along with government support, this will also incentivize the rapid development of Green Chemistry, making thousands of healthy and safe chemicals profitable as they underprice and replace their existing, harmful counterparts.

6. Institute the Precautionary Principle that new chemicals need to be proven safe in the long-term before entering our world with government testing paid for with True Cost Transformation fees levied on companies found guilty of chemical pollution, reckless endangerment, and having made a profit at the expense of our society and children.