San Francisco Chronicle (pg. M1), October 5, 2007

EXPOSED: THE POISONS AROUND US

[Rachel's introduction: "In one industry after another, a new double standard is emerging: that between the protection offered Europe's citizens, and those afforded to Americans." It is now fair to ask: "Is America itself becoming a new dumping ground for products forbidden because of their toxic effects in other countries?" Outmoded thinking has endangered not only America's health but also its economic future.]

By Steve Heilig

Book Review of: Exposed -- The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power, by Mark Schapiro (Chelsea Green, 219 pages, $22.95).

Recently, many Californians have received dramatic mailings from a group named Californians for Fire Safety warning that if legislation banning some fire-retardant chemicals is passed, we would all be at much greater risk of burning to death in fires. Among the omissions in this literature are that the "Californians" are actually chemical- industry lobbyists, that firefighters themselves support the proposed legislation and that the chemicals in question have already been banned elsewhere because of concerns about health problems such as increased cancer, birth defects and reproductive problems.

This last point, that we in the United States allow use of substances deemed too toxic in other nations, especially European ones, is the primary focus of San Francisco journalist Mark Schapiro's "Exposed." And while environmental science underlies the book's argument, it is notable that Schapiro's perspective is more a business one than otherwise. His startling message is that by lagging behind on environmental innovation, American industries are jeopardizing their financial future. And since money talks, he may have produced a book with more eventual impact than a crate of dire environmental warnings.

Public health researchers at UC Berkeley "estimate that forty-two billion pounds of chemicals enter American commerce daily, enough chemicals to fill up 623,000 tanker trucks, a string of trucks that could straddle the globe three times, every day," notes Schapiro. Further, "fewer than five hundred of those substances have undergone any substantive risk assessments." At the same time as this massive post-World War II production has taken place, research has demonstrated health hazards even or even especially, in some cases, at very low doses. And children, fetuses and pregnant women are especially vulnerable.

Schapiro's previous book, "Circle of Poison," demonstrated a quarter century ago that American chemical companies exported pesticides banned here, causing health hazards in poorer nations. Now the flow of risks is reversing. "In one industry after another, a new double standard is emerging: that between the protection offered Europe's citizens, and those afforded to Americans," Schapiro writes. And ironically, although we like to think of our nation as more advanced in such arenas, it is now fair to ask: "Is America itself becoming a new dumping ground for products forbidden because of their toxic effects in other countries?"

Consider cosmetics. A survey of common products "found hundreds of varieties of skin and tanning lotions, nail polish and mascara and other personal-care products that contain known or possible carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxins." Contrary to common assumption, most cosmetics are not effectively tested or regulated for their health effects. European authorities, however, started to demand toxicity information before multinational companies could continue to market their products there, and this development did garner corporate attention and action. Chemicals put on the European Union "negative list" were removed from products without seeming to hurt the bottom line.

Back at home, however, such as when a Safe Cosmetic Act was proposed for California just last year, chemical lobbyists convened en masse in Sacramento to argue that there were no risks from the chemicals used. "They (the cosmetic companies) are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby against laws in the United States that they've already agreed to in Europe," says a representative of the Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco. Of course, the industry agreed only under duress and when the regulatory writing was already on the wall. But no bankruptcies of European cosmetic companies have occurred because of such healthier standards, and as another advocate notes, "I don't notice European women looking any less stunning than they'd looked before."

The example of cosmetics can be seen as one of voluntary exposure, although consumers would seem to have a right to know exactly what they put onto or into their bodies. But Schapiro provides similar case studies of other chemicals or categories of substances, such as phthalates used in plastics, persistent organic pollutants including pesticides, and genetically modified foods, where much of our exposures occur even if we do not actively use a product. Meanwhile, federal agencies we might expect to protect us, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, have been "eviscerated from within" by the current administration.

The advent of the European Union has tilted balances of power in many ways, including how "chemical politics" now take place. When the EU developed far-reaching new regulations to reduce exposure to harmful substances, American chemical lobbyists swarmed across the Atlantic to fight them. But EU markets are now bigger than those in America, and as one diplomat there states, "We are not going to ask the United States for permission." This is true even when the White House weighs in on behalf of the chemical lobby, as was shown when a leaked memo indicated that such lobbyists were drafting letters from our ambassador to the EU, "an extraordinary glimpse into the routine merging of U.S. governmental and private interests," as Schapiro notes.

"U.S. environmental policies are not sparking innovation; they are fighting it," Schapiro holds. The EU economies are now growing faster than that of the United States; our balance of trade in chemicals has become negative for the first time. European experts calculate that their new safer chemical policies will "be repaid many times over by its benefits." "Europe is looking at the future," Schapiro concludes. "This is not utopian; it's more like a realpolitik for the twenty- first century."

How ironic then, that shortsighted, self-serving perspectives in what was once the New World have become outmoded, and put Americans at risk not only in terms of our health but also our economic future. So, yes, as the "fire safety" advocates advise, we probably should call our elected leaders. But read this book first.

Steve Heilig is on the staffs of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment and the San Francisco Medical Society.