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CNN's Dr. Gupta Talks Chemicals Policy
If you've been following CHANGE's blog posts, you probably know that there are 80,000 on the market and only 200 of them have been tested for safety. But that oft-quoted statistic in the chemicals policy world doesn't usually make it to broadcast television. Until now.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta gives a compelling report on how a 1976 toxic chemical law (the Toxics Substances Control Act, or TSCA) may be putting Americans at risk.
Click on "Read more" below to see the video entitled "Chemicals: Innocent or Guilty?"
In the video, Dr. Gupta talks about the long history of the toxic chemical TCE. Will TCE win an award at The Toxies this year? Should it?
We need federal reform of TSCA. In the meantime, read about efforts in California to protect our health from toxic chemicals.
Comments on this post
Posted by Sophie on Feb. 25, 2010
Thanks for posting this video. TCE is a real bad actor chemical. The nominations committee for the Toxies awards should consider "honoring" it with bad actor award. This chemical illustrates the inequality in protection (even ineffective protection) from toxic hazards that workers face.
Cal/EPA's Prop 65 No Significant Risk Level (NSRL) for inhalation exposure to TCE is 80ug/day. This means that breathing 80ug/day will result in "only" one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed over a 70-year lifetime.
If we apply this 80ug/day NSRL level to a workplace setting (meaning we use accepted assumptions about how much air a worker breathes per day, the length of an average working lifetime, the % of the chemical absorbed), we get, in essence, a NSRL level for the work environment, which is equivalent to an 8-hour TWA of 0.007ppm or 0.039mg/m3 (I didn't copy the math here, because this would be a much longer post, but I can if you'd like).
The permissible exposure limit (PEL) under Cal/OSHA is 25 ppm or 135mg/m3! That's right: 0.007ppm is the limit based on the Cal/EPA number, and 25ppm is the limit Cal/OSHA adopted. 0.007ppm would result in 1 excess cancer per 100,000 people. Think about excess cancers resulting from a 25ppm limit.
It's not right. We need a chemicals policy overhaul in this country, one that will force agencies like Cal/OSHA to play catch up and stop allowing workplace exposures at levels that are illegal on the sidewalk outside of that workplace.
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