By Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune –
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced it will conduct a broad investigation of flame retardants that a Chicago Tribune series identified as examples of the government’s failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals.
Meanwhile, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission urged lawmakers to grant special authority that could speed the removal of hazardous flame retardants from new upholstered furniture, including sofas that can contain up to 2 pounds of the chemicals in their foam cushions.
The initiatives, outlined at a Senate subcommittee hearing, opened new fronts in a debate about chemicals that for years have been added to a wide variety of household goods and baby products, even as a growing amount of research has identified health concerns and raised doubts about whether flame retardants prevent fires.
The Tribune’s investigation, which prompted the hearing, exposed a deceptive, decades-long campaign by the tobacco and chemical industries to promote flame retardants. Tapping into the public’s fear of fire, industry created a phony consumer group that distorted science and organized an association of top fire officials to advocate greater use of flame retardants in furniture and electronics.
Promoted as lifesavers, flame retardants added to furniture cushions actually provide no meaningful protection from fires, according to federal researchers and independent scientists. Some of the most widely used chemicals are linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility.
James J. Jones, the EPA’s top chemical safety official, told senators that flame retardants illustrate several weaknesses in the Toxic Substances Control Act, a 1976 law that gives the government little power to assess or limit dangers from flame retardants and scores of other chemicals. The law allows chemical companies to put their products on the market without proving they are safe and makes it almost impossible to ban chemicals after health effects are documented.
The Obama administration has repeatedly called for an overhaul of the law, but legislation sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Dick Durbin of Illinois has been mired in anti-regulatory politics.
Jones said the EPA will use its limited authority under the existing law to target several flame retardants, including one chemical mixture that the agency promoted as safe nearly a decade ago and is now widely sold under the brand name Firemaster 550.
The EPA also will adopt a new strategy by the end of the year focusing on a larger group of flame retardants that pose “the greatest potential concerns,” Jones said in prepared remarks to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, an influential spending panel chaired by Durbin.
“The American public has the right to expect that the chemicals manufactured, imported and used in this country are safe,” Jones said. “The time to fix this badly outdated law is now.”