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CHANGE (Californians for a Healthy & Green Economy)
A growing coalition of environmental health, policy, labor, environmental justice, interfaith, and other organizations who are working to create a better system for regulating toxic chemicals in California.Community voices, especially low-income and communities of color, are vital to the process of determining how chemicals should be regulated in California.
Workers, low income and communities of color are disproportionately-impacted by the health effects of chemicals in the environment and in products. We recognize that these efforts will only be worthwhile if community voices are at the table helping craft solutions to the problem. We are in the process of bringing more communities of color to participate in the process and invite you to join us.
You Asked, Congress Listened
We’ve just moved one step closer to retiring Bad Actor Chemicals in this country. Yesterday, Congressmen Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) formally introduced the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 (H.R. 5820). Back in June we asked you to contact your representative to urge them to make the Toxics Substances Control Act reform bills stronger in five ways. Guess what? You asked and they listened (mostly). Look at how the new bill took some of your thoughts and incorporated them (or not):
Alternatives Analysis Symposium 2
On July 28th, 2010, the Department of Toxic Substance (DTSC) will be hosting a symposium to further explore alternatives analysis for harmful chemicals. The process of identifying and analyzing safer alternatives for chemicals to use in products is a highly complex and scientific approach that crosses multiple disciplines. In order for an alternatives assessment to be productive and efficient, dialogue amongst different stakeholders is crucial to establishing a successful system in California.
The symposium is free and open to the public.
Read more...Story of the Safe Cosmetics Act
In the third story of our ongoing series, "Independence from Toxic Chemicals," Ryan Berghoff describes California's Safe Cosmetics Act, the first law in the country to address toxic chemicals in cosmetics.
Every day millions of people cover their bodies in a variety of cosmetics and personal care products hoping to look more attractive, but there is a price to pay for beauty (and I’m not talking about how expensive cosmetic products are). Independent testing in the United States and the European Union has determined that some cosmetic products contain substances known or suspected to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity that can harm the mother, fetus, and nursing children. Dangerous chemicals have a knack for showing up in our every day products, from toys that our children play with to the cosmetics in our bathroom cabinets, and that is why California has taken the lead in passing legislation to protect its residents.
Read more...The Power of Proposition 65: What you don't see
As part of our ongoing series, "Independence from Toxic Chemicals," Pamela King Palitz describes California's groundbreaking Proposition 65.
People love to poke fun at Proposition 65, the 1986 right-to-know law that requires manufacturers, retailers and other businesses to provide notice to Californians when they are being exposed to toxic chemicals. Everyone has seen the warning signs at the airport, or on a gas pump, or in a parking structure and thought, “Thanks for the warning, buddy. Really, though … do I have any choice about being here?”
Read more...Safer Product Regulations Fall Short
California’s Green Chemistry Initiative has been touted as a bold and innovative move toward more effective and efficient regulation of industrial chemicals in consumer products. But the Initiative’s draft regulations would perpetuate the most serious flaws of the current system: too weak, too slow and stacked against the public in favor of industry.
In two letters, over 50 environmental, public health, consumer, social justice, and labor advocates from every region of California have written to Gov. Schwarzenegger and to Cal-EPA Secretary Linda Adams, saying the draft regulations issued last month “fall far short of meeting the worthy goals of the Initiative.”
Read more...