0:01
So I want to step back a little bit for a few moments and
describe some of the drivers that led to this final reform of TSCA after 40 years.
What caused it to get onto the national agenda and actually cause Congress to act?
Well, the first thing is simply the fact that chemicals are everywhere.
And increasingly, there are questions being raised about their safety.
0:29
About 10 trillion pounds of chemicals are produced every year in the US.
And you can imagine wearing a 90-pound backpack on your back.
And then at the end of the day putting that one aside and
the next morning picking up another one.
That is literally how much in the form of chemicals that are regulated under TSCA,
we produce and use every day.
They're used to make just about everything around us.
96% is an estimate.
That excludes a few things like wood and other natural materials.
But just about everything we touch and
use is made of synthetic chemicals regulated by TSCA.
Now, we don't actually know how many chemicals are in US Congress but
we have some ball park figures.
We know that 85,000 chemicals have been in Congress
at some point since TSCA originally passed in 1976.
We know that not all of those are in commerce today but
we don't know how many actually are.
In fact when TSCA passed in 1976 there were about 62,000 chemicals on the market.
And those were put on to what is called the TSCA Inventory.
And then 23,000 new chemicals were added.
At a rate of between 500 and 1,000 a year.
So there really are a lot of new chemicals coming in the market,
replacing old ones, and some of the old ones simply are no longer being used.
So, we'll get to how TSCA reform
deals with getting a better handle on that in a moment.
2:08
Some of the reasons why TSCA reform suddenly became a priority for
the Congress, is because of a series of findings and scientific research,
that began to connect the dots between our use of chemicals and
diseases that are on the rise in the human population.
We know that certain diseases such as certain childhood cancers,
infertility, asthma,
reproductive effects are all on the rise, and they're on the rise in manner
that really can only be explained as a result of environmental factors.
And, increasingly,
there's evidence that chemical exposures are one of those factors.
We know that because in laboratory studies, and
sometimes even in human epidemiological studies, certain chemicals have
been linked to the same diseases that are on the rise in the human population.
3:10
And finally,
we now know that many of those same chemicals actually are in our bodies.
We have been exposed to them through the products we use, through the food, and
air and water that we consume.
Those chemicals can be found now in our blood.
3:28
Some of the diseases that I mentioned before that have been linked in
scientific studies to direct chemical exposures, include this really long list.
Many of the major chronic effects in humans that we worry about and
that we are doing a lot to try to reduce, chemicals have a role.
It's often hard to quantify, some chemicals have a very strong link,
other ones less clear.
However, increasingly there's a worry that the use and widespread
nature of chemical exposures is resulting in health effects in the human population.
4:10
We know that, in part, because we better understand how chemicals
get from where they're being used, or made, to our bodies.
We know now that chemicals can be transported very long distances.
For example, the arctic regions of the world actually
have some of the highest concentrations of certain synthetic chemicals.
And they got there, not because people are using products containing them but
because those chemicals were released to the environment and
then transported long distances through the air or the water.
And also through the contamination of wildlife that
moves long distances as well.
So marine mammals in the Arctic have some of the highest concentrations of
certain synthetic chemicals found on Earth.
We know that chemicals can get out of products that they're used in and
into the environment and into people.
And let me just mention two brief examples.
5:11
If you go out on a parking lot and you look at the surface of that,
it's often sealed with a very dark or black coating.
That is intended to keep rain water out and make that driveway last longer.
Well it turns out that those sealants contain chemicals and
those chemicals don't just stay put.
They actually run off into water during rain events.
And they are actually now known to be picked up by one's shoes,
when you walk across a parking lot or your driveway, and they are brought into your
house and end up as a contaminant in the dust in your house.
And this has now been scientifically shown by researchers at the US Geological Survey
to be a significant source of exposure to some very dangerous chemicals,
chemicals we know cause cancer in people.
The other example are so-called brominated flame retardants that have been used for
a number of decades in the furniture that we sit on, in the upholstered furniture.
And it's specifically put into the foam as an effort to try to
reduce the fire risk, should that furniture catch on fire.
6:37
Every time you sit on it and
compress it, a little bit of dust comes out through the upholstery.
And that dust is laden with these brominated flame retardants.
And we know from animal studies and sometimes now human studies that some of
those chemicals can adversely affect our health.
6:55
We also know that we're not all exposed to chemicals at the same level or
in the same way.
In fact, some people are more exposed than others because of where they live,
what kinds of products they buy and can afford to buy.
And other factors like that, that are differential across the population.
And this is part of a much broader set of issues
that goes under the words environmental justice.
Because some people who live in poor neighborhoods,
in sub-standard housing, less access to healthcare and
the like, may also suffer from disproportionate exposures
to chemicals from the environment and even from products that they use.
7:44
We know some of this because of advances in science,
that include the ability to actually monitor human beings for
the presence of chemicals in our bodies.
And this is a called biomonitoring and
the advent of that really goes back a couple of decades.
But the more chemicals that we have looked at and we do so through
a government program that looks at several thousand people every couple of years.
The more chemicals we look for, the more we find.
8:17
And we know that some of those chemicals are in fact toxic.
So that is another connecting of the dots here, that those chemicals that are in
use, that are linked to diseases are actually being found in our bodies.
And finally,
there's a large body of evidence that suggests that probably the most
vulnerable period of time to be exposed to chemicals is during very early life.
In utero, a pregnant woman who's exposed to chemicals can pass some of those
chemicals through the placenta to her developing fetus.
And in early infancy, when children's metabolism is changing,
when many of its systems are being developed,
its neurodevelopmental system, its immune system, and so forth.
Chemical exposures during that window of vulnerability
can be particularly troubling.
Dr. Megan Weil Latshaw, PhDCo-Director of the Masters Programs in Environmental Health
Beth A. Resnick, MPHAssociate Scientist
