Contact: EWG Public Affairs, 202-667-6982

WASHINGTON, May 22 /Standard Newswire/ -- Amid rising concern over toxic chemicals in consumer products and in the bodies of Americans, landmark legislation has been introduced in Congress to make sure chemicals are safe before they are allowed on the market.

Under current law known as the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), unchanged since 1976, most new chemicals are approved with little or no safety testing, and more than 62,000 existing chemicals have remained on the market for three decades despite evidence that some pose serious health risks. The Kid Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA), by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Reps. Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), would place the burden of proof on the chemical industry to show that chemicals are safe for children before they are added to consumer products.

"Every day, consumers rely on household products that contain hundreds of chemicals. The American public expects the federal government to keep families safe by testing chemicals, but the government is letting them down," Lautenberg said in a press release. "We already have strong regulations for pesticides and pharmaceuticals. It's common sense that we do the same for chemicals that end up in household items such as bottles and toys."

The current law is so toothless that the U.S. EPA was unable to ban asbestos under its provisions, even though asbestos is perhaps the most potent cancer-causing substance ever introduced into commerce and kills about 10,000 people per year. In the 32 years since TSCA was passed, EPA has evaluated the safety of just 200 out of 80,000 chemicals, and banned only 5.

The Kid Safe Chemicals Act would give EPA the mandate to protect public health from chemical exposures and the authority to get the job done. The bill puts the burden of proving chemical safety where it belongs - with the manufacturers - and makes available to the public a wealth of health and safety information used to make safety determinations. KSCA recognizes the magnitude of the task and sets priorities for action based on whether chemicals are found in people, with special priority for chemicals found in human umbilical cord blood.

Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group (EWG), whose tests found 287 industrial chemicals in 10 samples of umbilical cord blood, called KSCA a long-overdue move to put public health ahead of chemical industry profits.

"When babies come into this world pre-polluted with hundreds of dangerous industrial chemicals already in their blood, it's clear that the regulatory system is broken," said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group (EWG). "The Kid Safe Chemicals Act will change a lax, outdated system that presumes chemicals are safe into one that requires makers of toxic chemicals to prove their safety before they're allowed on the market."

KSCA does not propose to invent new public health criteria, but instead adopts tough health standards that chemical manufacturers already comply with for other products like pesticides and food additives, and applies these same standards to industrial chemicals that also end up in people.

A coalition of grassroots, state and national organizations led by EWG sent a letter to the lawmakers today applauding their action and pledging support as the work begins to make this legislation law. The letter and list of organizations is available at http://www.ewg.org.