Conclusion
When the Toxics Substances Control Act became law in 1976, smoking was permitted in airplanes, hospitals, and all other public places. There were no laws requiring that children or adults wear seat belts. Lead was still being added to gasoline. In the more than 30 years that have passed, Americans and their elected officials have taken action on all of these issues and witnessed significant improvement in public health.
The last 30 years of science linking human health and the environment make clear that TSCA reform presents another opportunity to dramatically improve public health:
- The new science on cancer shows why TSCA reform should require chemical manufacturers to provide basic information on the health hazards associated with their chemicals, how they are used, and the ways that the public or workers could be exposed. Chemical manufacturers need to be made responsible for demonstrating the safety of their products. The law should be designed to protect the health of all Americans, by ensuring EPA has ample authority to take action on dangerous chemicals like asbestos.
- Recent research demonstrating the ability of relatively small amounts of chemicals to permanently harm the developing brain illustrates the critical need to protect especially vulnerable people. Effective TSCA reform must ensure that all existing and new chemicals are safe for pregnant women, children, workers and other sensitive populations.
- The studies suggesting linkages between chemical exposures and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease highlight that effective TSCA reform must recognize the unique dangers posed by exposure to persistent, bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs), like PCBs, and include provisions to phase out all non-essential uses of them. Communities and populations that bear disproportionately high burdens of PBT contamination need to be the focus of exposure reduction efforts.
- The findings on reproductive health and fertility problems make the case for prioritized action on bisphenol A, phthalates, perfluorinated compounds, and other industrial chemicals that new science identifies as harmful to reproduction and development.
- And the growing body of research linking asthma to chemical exposures shows why the public, workers, and the marketplace should have full access to information about the health and environmental hazards of chemicals, how they are used, and the ways that exposure might take place.
Figure 3 from Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging (Jill Stein, et al., Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging: With a Closer Look at Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease, ed. Nancy Myers (Boston: Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Science and Environmental Health Network, 2008)) illustrates the interacting factors that can lead to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Figure 3 - Interacting Factors that May Contribute to Neurodegenerative Disease
This figure, adapted from Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, (Ibid.) illustrates some of the interacting factors in the modern chemical, nutritional, social, and built environments that may be contributing to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative disease. New science suggests that most other chronic disease is also the result of interacting factors.
In Lisbeth B. Schorr’s 1988 book Within Our Reach—Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage, (Lisbeth Schorr, Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage (New York: Anchor Press, 1988).) she describes the stressors or risk factors for “rotten outcomes” for America’s disadvantaged children and the elements of successful programs to prevent those rotten outcomes.
Schorr explains that “it takes multiple and interacting risk factors to produce damaging outcomes. Lasting damage occurs when the elements of a child’s environment—at home, at school, in the neighborhood—multiply each other’s destructive effect.”
But just as the adding on of risk factors can multiply harm, the removal of risk factors can divide the negative impact. Schorr explains:
The implication is clear: The prevention of rotten outcomes is not a matter of all or nothing. It will be of value if we can eliminate one risk factor or two, even if others remain. By distinguishing between those factors we can do something about and those we can’t, the problem becomes less intractable.
Over the last three decades scientists have learned that chronic disease is also the result of “multiple and interacting risk factors.” Exposure to chemicals is such a factor, along with poor nutrition, lack of exercise, genes that predispose one to disease, infection, challenging social and economic conditions, age, and tobacco use. The interplay of variables begins before conception and continues for an entire lifetime.
Chemical exposure is a factor we can do something about. By reforming TSCA, we can lessen the role of chemical exposures in causing disease, thereby reducing our nation’s chronic disease burden and helping to control health care costs. In simplest terms, real reform will lead to more healthy babies, fewer women with breast cancer, a return to normal fertility patterns, and lower numbers of people with Alzheimer’s disease. This is the promise of TSCA reform.
