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D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) has introduced a bill that would ban more than a dozen hazardous chemicals from being sold in the District, the Examiner reports. Among the materials listed in the proposed ban: Mattresses and furniture containing polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, which act as flame retardents; food or beverage containers intended for children younger than 6 that contain Bisphenol-A, or BPA, which has been linked to neurological health problems; and body scrub beauty products that contain synthetic microbeads, which are often blamed for contributing to oceanic pollution.
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on a practical level, people will just go to maryland and virginia to get these products if they are banned in the district.
on another level, if these things do need to be banned, the process has to start somewhere (if the feds don't act first), so DC might as well be it. if, in the long run, these products aren't available anywhere, we get to say we were the forerunners.
Your first point is likely true, but if the trouble causes even a few people to stop and wonder why they have to travel for the products, maybe it will get them to look for alternatives.
That's certainly worked for guns.
ha, cheers Monk.
Councilmember Cheh does not have the education required to make such a decision. Unless she's a physician or chemist she has no business creating any such bill. It strikes me as being based on fear generated from ignorance and GWB-style fear of science.
neener: that's a pretty short-sighted way of looking at legislation. don't you think there are people in councilmembers' offices researching these things? i mean, if our legislators can only legislate on what they went to school for, nothing would ever get passed at any level of government.
That certainly hasn't stopped Cheh from jumping on numerous other causes du jour of this type.
Thank you Neener. As a chemist I can assure you that with many of these materials there is no cause for alarm. The replacement chemicals being used in plastics currently are much less studied and understood than the ones being fear mongered off of the market by activist groups without adequate scientific support. More harm than good may come out of this in the long term. I would love it if these groups would rather than through their 501(e) branches place full page ads in the NYT and WP or air commercials on prime time CNN would commission validated scientific studies using OECD protocols to verify their claims.
Bans never work. If people want to effect change then they should encourage the manufacturers of their commonly used products to reformulate in a sensible well researched manner so that we are not creating a future problem. The consumer product companies want your loyalty and with enough consumer pressure will give you what you want. You would be surprised how well this approach works. I challenge you to find a major brand baby bottle, teething toy etc. with BPA or phthalates in them that has been manufactured over the last year. Parents refused to buy them and big stores like WalMart and Target noted this and turned the screws on the plastics companies by not stocking items containing these substances. Money speaks.
food or beverage containers intended for children younger than 6 that contain Bisphenol-A, or BPA, which has been linked to neurological health problems;
Alright, here's DC's foot-in-the-door to pass a snack tax and bottle bill to take care of all the f**king garbage in DC. Rap Snacks and HFCS sodas make the poor little tots morbidly obese; broken bottles are a threat to our children; and soda bottles can easily be turned into drug paraphenalia. Beverage container manufacturers = WORSE THAN HITLER.
Cheh blinded me....WITH SCIENCE!
Why not be bold and make a real difference. Ban the sale of televisions and cell phones produced with toxic chemicals or those that are primarily sourced from countries with established records of poor labor/human rights practices?
I mean, bath soap with micro-beads? No wonder Nickels gave her flowers.
Yeah, he died in a mattress fire, but he was wicked healthy up until that point.
I cannot believe that the Council would high-handedly step in and redefine mattresses! Mattresses have been the basis of sleeping for thousands of years, and the burden of proof on the wisdom of redefining mattresshood is on those who would ignore the vast weight of historical evidence. Councilmember Cheh has shown vast contempt for people who support traditional mattresses by indicating her support for this legislation before it has even come up for a hearing, demonstrating that her mind has already been made up. It is brazenly unethical for Councilmembers to write legislation before a hearing is held on the legislation they've written.
I demand a referendum on this issue! Let the people vote! And if they vote the wrong way, I call upon Congress to veto Cheh's assault on traditional mattresses!
So the liberal pro-futon agenda continues its War on Mattresses unabated. Mattresses aren't meant to be folded, people! It's in Leviticus! What kind of sick, twisted individual would fold a mattress into a couch, or leave it on the floor without a frame? What's next? Tatami mats? That may work in Asia, but last time I checked, America wasn't founded by a bunch of sandal-wearing goldfish tenders. Bosh! Flimshaw! It was founded by god-fearing Christians who slept (and did nothing ELSE besides sleep, I might add) on mattresses. The Good Book says, "And thou shalt not lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith; neither shall any woman stand before a beast, to lie down thereto: it is confusion." And this is why mattresses should not be flame retarded. How are you supposed to burn the scene of the abomination?
Phew what a relief! Now we can all get back to being poisoned solely by deteriorating stockpiles of mustard gas in Cheh's own Ward 3.
Shouldn't she be more concerned about that peculiar brand of 9mm "lead poisoning" they suffer from in Ward 8?
At least she's off the "light pollution" kick.
Perhaps we could start by banning the following chemicals: Blow, nose candy, snowball, tornado, wicky stick, Smack, thunder, hell dust, big H, nose drops, Vikes, Hydro, Norco, Air blast, Moon gas, Ames, Oz, Amys Pearls, Bolt, Poppers, Boppers, Quicksilver, Bullet, Rush Snappers, Bullet bolt, Satan's secret, Buzz bomb, Discorama, Snappers, Acid, blotter acid, window pane, dots, mellow yellow, Grass, pot, weed, bud, Mary Jane, dope, indo, MDMA, Ecstasy, XTC, E, X, Beans, Adams, Hug Drug, Disco Biscuit, Go, Speed, Meth, Ice, Crystal, Chalk, Crank, Tweak, Uppers, Black Beauties, Glass, Bikers Coffee, Methlies Quick, Poor Man's Cocaine, Chicken Feed, Shabu, Crystal Meth, Stove Top, Trash, Go-Fast, Yaba, and Yellow Bam, Kicker, OC, Oxy, OX, Blue, Oxycotton, Hillybilly Heroin, Arnolds, gym candy, pumpers, roids, stackers, weight trainers, gear, and juice.
The odds of dying of cancer are much higher than the odds of dying from a fire. So obviously the risks of flame retardants far outweighs their benefits. And no, people are not going to go outside the district to get a flame-retardant mattress because most people never knew those toxic chemicals were sprayed on there in the first place, and most people don't want toxic chemicals in their bed.
Flame retardants are well known to cause cancer. They are put in all kinds of clothing, furniture, etc... and they go right though your skin and into the blood steam. It's no wonder that cancer is now one of the leading causes of death when we spray cancer-causing chemicals all over everything. You could test just about anyone and find toxic levels of cancer-causing flame retardants, pesticides, herbicides, and other petro-chemicals.
The risks of these chemicals far outweighs their benefits. Ask someone dying of cancer if they know anyone who's life was saved by flame retardants in clothing, furniture, or by pesticides in their food and drinking water. The answer is NO. But the chemicals did kill hundreds of thousands of cancer...slowly and very painfully.
Oh, and by the way BPA makes your wee-wee shrink smaller. WAY SMALLER. And it causes ED, which is epidemic. And it causes breast cancer and ovarian cancer, which are also now epidemic. BPA is also shown in brain scans to cause men to think more like women, and women to think more like men - in other words both are reversed... these changes in brain patterns are reflected in the shrunken sex organs that are now epidemic.
Go ahead, drink from that BPA plastic cup! See what happens! Did you know all metal cans are still lined with pure BPA plastic???
Please do cite some reputable literature on all of these assertions. I would love to read these studies or executive summaries. They don't have to be published but should come with laboratory assurances that they follow either OECD or GLP guidance. Pubmed is really easy to search as is TOXNET and both are free!
A quick 5 minute Google search (not highly scientific but the sources are reputable) revealed:
1. Mattress fires are much less prevalent than they were 100 years ago because of flame retardants. The rates have been even further reduced buy the diminishing numbers of Americans who smoke. Kids playing still cause most fires.
http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v2i17-508.pdf
2. Cancer rates in general are declining according to the National Cancer Institute. In areas of increase many of the cancers are attributable to obesity and poor dietary habits.
http://progressreport.cancer.gov/trends-glance.asp