On October 26th, the New Jersey Environmental Federation joined Senator Lautenberg and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson at a hearing in Newark on toxic chemicals and children's health. They were joined by CNN's Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta, New Jersey mother Lisa Huguenot who has a child with autism and an immune system disorder, and Frederica Perera, the Director of Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.

The hearing came at a critical juncture in time-last April Senator Lautenberg introduced the Safe Chemicals Act as an attempt to overhaul the failed 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. This was followed by another bill introduced in the House-the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act-by Congressman Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Sadly, these landmark bills never made it through the last Congressional session. However, the New Jersey Environmental Federation and Clean Water Action has joined with Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a broad coalition of 250 public health and environmental groups working to build momentum to reform the outdated law.

Our chemical safety system is failing our communities. We need updates to the law that protects the most vulnerable among us--our children--and especially reduce hot spots in urban communities that face the highest exposure to hazardous chemicals.

Toxic Chemicals: The Cost to our Health

Cancer, reproductive problems, asthma, learning disabilities, diabetes-all of these diseases have been linked by scientists to toxic chemicals in everyday products, including building products, plastics, personal care products, and household cleaners.

From BPA in baby bottles to formaldehyde in mattresses, consumers have to fight a constant battle to keep dangerous chemicals out of their homes...and our children. A recent ground-breaking study of newborn umbilical cord blood showed that infants at birth have well over 200 toxic chemicals in their bodies. New studies have linked early life exposure to toxic chemicals and development later in life to diseases like breast and testicular cancer, and Alzheimer's disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost half of all U.S. residents are now living with chronic diseases which now account for 70 percent of deaths and 75 percent of U.S. health care costs.

Broken System, Chronic Disease Burden

The law that is supposed to protect us from toxic chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is broken. The law dates back to 1976, before new science confirmed that small amounts of toxic chemicals have the ability to harm our health or that children are especially vulnerable to hazardous chemicals at key moments of development.

As things stand now, out of the roughly 80,000 chemicals in commerce, the USEPA has been able to require testing of only around 200, and only five have been restricted.

All 62,000 chemicals formulated prior to 1976 were "grandfathered" in for use with no requirement that they be tested or shown to be safe. The EPA even tried to use TSCA to restrict asbestos 20 years ago and failed.

What is even scarier is what we don't know. Nearly 20 percent of the 84,000 chemicals used commercially in the U.S. have been kept secret from the public--a loophole in TSCA. The number of secret chemicals now totals about 17,000, many of which are found in everyday consumer products-apparel, plastic products, furniture. At least 10 of the 151 confidential high-volume (more than 1 million tons produced a year) are used in products targeted specifically to children.

Today we are witnessing a devastating and ever-growing impact on public health and our economy:

•  Leukemia, brain cancer and other childhood cancers have increased by more than 20% since 1975
• Learning and development disabilities are estimated to affect 1 in 6 children in the U.S.
•  Breast cancer went up by 40% between 1973 and 1998
• Asthma prevalence approximately doubled between 1980 and 1995
• Difficulty in conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy affected 40% more women in 2001 than in 1982

So why is this happening and why has Congress failed to act?

Without touching upon just how powerful the chemical industry lobby is, we can simply say that it's because we live in a country where chemicals are thought to be innocent until proven guilty.

According to CNN's Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta: "The only way chemicals are proven guilty is by health effects turning up in people who have been exposed, often years later. In some ways, this makes us all guinea pigs. But this isn't the same all over the world. The European Union has adopted a different standard to evaluate chemicals. It is more of a precautionary approach, and goes by the acronym REACH. Simply, the burden of showing a chemical safe has shifted from the regulator to the producer. As a result, communities know more about the air they breathe, the food they eat and the water they drink. People in the industry told me that this precautionary stance has not affected companies' bottom lines."

The time to enact the Safe Chemicals Act and reform TSCA is now! There is no longer time to waste. By reforming TSCA, we can reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals, reduce our nation's chronic disease burden, and save on scarce health care dollars. According to the most conservative estimate, reforming TSCA will result in reduced illness and annual healthcare savings of $5 billion nationally!

Make YOUR Voice Count!

Contact your current federal legislators and urge they strengthen the Safe Chemicals Act/Toxic Chemicals Safety Act by supporting provisions that:

• Ensure chemicals are safe before they are allowed on the market
• Phase out the worst toxic chemicals first, like lead, cancer-causing formaldehyde and others that persist in our bodies and environment
• Reward green chemistry innovation so that new safe chemicals have an expedited, easier entry to the marketplace

For more information, contact Jenny Vickers, Communications Coordinator, at 732-280-8988 or jvickers@cleanwater.org.