That new car smell?
My friend Marian Keeler, an expert on indoor air quality, wrote a great article on that "new car smell" some people look forward to when buying a car.
That new car smell you savor is really an airborne soup of chemicals that could prove hazardous to your health...
FULL STORY
Labels: toxic
2 Comments:
I appreciate your choice of stories in here. We've actually hit some of the same stuff on our blog. Check us out:
http://dailyirk.blogspot.com/
Keep up the good work.
Toxicity data is only available for a small number of chemicals found in the study, because currently there are no regulations that require health and environmental testing of chemicals found in consumer products. As documented in the 2005 US Congress Bill s1391, the US EPA has reviewed the human health risks for an estimated 2 percent of the 62,000 chemicals that have been produced since 1976, Further, in the last 29 years the EPA has issued regulations to ban or restrict the use of only 5 substances. This bill proposed that the EPA Administrator develop a list of the top 300 chemicals that are suspected to have the greatest human health risks.
Not only is the health of Americans impacted by the lack of regulations, humans all around the world suffer. According to the WTO, over 85% of chemicals exported in trade come from the US and EU (including the 25 extra-EU countries). The burden of responsibility for establishing testing regulations is on the countries developing these products. Until now, the EU hasn't had a much better regulatory record than the US. Greenpeace Europe estimates that around 140 of the 100,000 chemicals manufactured in the EU have been subjected to detailed health and environmental testing. Proposed EU legislation REACH, would require manufacturer registration of about 30,000 chemicals in the first 11 years, a much more aggressive plan than in the US.
The Greenpeace report highlights that babies are now born with up to 100 manmade chemicals already in their bodies. Results from a study in Washington State released May 2006 found many banned chemicals such as DDT in the bodies of test participants. For more info about the pollution in people, see the Body Burden site.
Unfortunately, most people are not aware of the weakness of current regulations. As you can imagine, companies are not in favor of these proposed regulations because they would bear the increased costs for new testing requirements. Ethical and social responsibility is critical here.
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