Jennifer Sass's Blog
NRDC sues Consumer Product Safety Commission for withholding industry correspondence
July 30, 2008
Posted by Jennifer Sass in Health and the Environment
Today, NRDC filed a lawsuit against the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for their failure to hand over their communications with industry related to a class of toxic plastics chemicals called phthalates.
Phthalates make plastics flexible, like infant products and children's toys, packaging, flexible tubing, and some adhesives. NRDC even found them in air fresheners. The government even found them in our bodies!
Although most types of phthalates are not well studied, we do know that in male rodents exposed before or soon after birth to some kinds of phthalates, many rodent pups showed a variety of developmental and reproductive abnormalities, including undescended testes, feminized reproductive organs, and hypospadias (failure of the penis to form a fully closed tube). Eeewwww! More information is available here and here.
Maybe that is why House and Senate conferees this week agreed to a Bill that contained a provision to ban some types of phthalates from children's toys, effective six months from now. Yay Congress! The bill is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Although the House and Senate still have to vote on the bill, if passed, it would ban three types of phthalates from children's toys, including DEHP, and temporarily outlaw three others until their health effects are better studied in children and pregnant women. This precautionary move is a welcomed sign of progress since toxic chemicals are usually presumed innocent by regulators until evidence of harm is overwhelming and undeniable.
Way to follow behind those trend-setters, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, that told their suppliers earlier this year to get phthalates out of the kiddie toys.
The Congressional ban was strongly opposed by Exxon Mobil that, according to the Washington Post, "...spent a chunk of its $22 million lobbying budget in the past 18 months to try to prevent any ban."
Public Citizen, Consumers Union and others did an analysis of CPSC recalls in 2008 and found that in the first six months, "...108 children’s products were recalled, including 45 for lead contamination and 10 for hazardous magnets. Of those 108 products, fifty-three toys have been recalled this year already, totaling 6.2 million units." These recall measures represent a failure to protect the public from hazards in consumer products until millions of toxic toys are already in our children’s bedrooms, playrooms, daycares, and cribs.
Our legal team had requested the documents from CPSC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which obligates all federal agencies to disclose communications (letters, emails, meeting notes, etc.) with outside parties, i.e. the industry. We made our request in April, 2007; it has been over a year and we have received absolutely nothing, despite legal requirements for CPSC to respond within 20 days.
Not taking 'no' for an answer, we took legal action. The public has a legal right to know about the CPSC's communications with Exxon and other manufacturers of these phthalates, and the oil an chemical industries have a duty to tell the public which products might be exposing them to these dangerous chemicals.
This blog will keep you posted as our legal and scientific team sort through the documents we expect to receive!
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