American Kids: The Chemical Industry's Guinea Pigs

If there's one substance that's ubiquitous throughout America's consumer products, it's chemicals. Everything from plastics to food packaging to furniture to toiletries contain a brew of unpronounceable substances like 2-methylnaphthalene and polybrominated diphenyl ethers. Here's one seriously scary stat that will make you put down that plastic bottle: Of the 84,000 chemicals on the market today, only one percent have undergone safety studies. It's an information gap that quite literally makes consumers guinea pigs to the chemical industry.

While this constant state of chemical exposure is concerning for everyone, it's especially worrisome for children, babies, and developing fetuses. Yesterday, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing to address just that, called "Toxic Chemicals and Children's Environmental Health." Senators heard from folks like Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson; CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta; Steven Marcus, the medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System; and Frederica Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.

While research is just getting started on this topic, all of these people explained how the chemicals we're exposed to every day could be negatively impacting the health of kids, babies, and developing fetuses. "Babies in this country are born pre-polluted," Gupta said at the hearing, according to CNN.

The doctor couldn't have put it better. Studies have found chemicals like the hormone disruptor bisphenol-A (BPA), flame retardant PBDE, phthalates, and the pesticide chlorpyrifos in kids and babies' cord blood. A 2009 study conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found an average of 232 different chemicals in 10 babies' cord blood. As CNN reports, "they are chemicals found in a wide array of common household products, including shampoos and conditioners, cosmetics, plastics, shower curtains, mattresses, and electronics."

The real issue here is that under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, manufacturers don't actually have to prove a chemical's safety before putting it on the market. American shoppers buy up their soaps, packaged foods, plastic containers, and other stuff, but no one — not even chemical manufacturers, in some cases — know whether or not these products are slowly killing us or our kids. "What we don't know can really hurt us," Gupta said. "And there's a lot we don't know."

Reform for this woefully inadequate law could be on the way — if new legislation garners enough support, that is. The House's Toxic Chemicals Safety Act and the Senate's Safe Chemicals Act would make manufacturers prove that a chemical is safe before putting it on the market. Sign our petition asking Congress to support legislation that would overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks via Flickr