Regulation Going the Wrong Way?

"Editorial: Toxic Dilemmas"
Donald Kennedy
Science 23 November 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5854, p. 1217

Excerpts:

(In the 1970's there was) widespread use of a compound called tris(2,3-ibromopropyl) phosphate as a fire retardant in children's sleepwear. A mutagen and putative human carcinogen, it leeched into children's bodies. After a 1977 paper by Blum and Ames in Science, that use was banned. Well, the alert chemical industry quickly substituted a dichlorinated tris, which Ames and Blum also found to be mutagenic and was subsequently removed from sleepwear.....

The history of residential fire risk is an interesting one, because it involves the tobacco industry. Remember them? They designed cigarettes that when dropped or put down, would smolder long enough to start a fire. For years, cigarette-lit fires were the greatest cause of fire-related deaths in the United States. After three decades of opposition from tobacco lobbyists, 22 states and Canada finally passed laws requiring that cigarettes be made self-extinguishing. With fewer people smoking and better enforcement of building codes, fire-related deaths are decreasing.....

Fire retardants are now widely used in furniture foam, and the second most-used compound is none other than chlorinated tris! In less than three decades, this highly toxic mutagen has moved from your child's nightgown to your sofa.

Arlene is scientific adviser for a bill in the California legislature called AB 706, which would ban the use of the most toxic fire retardants from furniture and bedding unless the manufacturers can show safety. It has a good chance of passage next year; even the firefighters support it. Not surprisingly, chemical manufacturers have launched a fear campaign in opposition, claiming that their products have dramatically reduced fire deaths in California, although the rate of decrease is about the same as that in states that do not regulate furniture flammability.

But the problem is a national one. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Reform Act (S 2045) toyed with a provision that would rush us into a national furniture flammability standard. That's premature, because it leaves no time to develop a safe way to reduce furniture flammability and puts potentially persistent toxic chemicals into U.S. homes.

Comment: Kennedy is very credible on this topic, as is the journal of the AAAS. I agree we should not regulate the inclusion of dangerous chemicals into household goods to obtain doubtful fire protection without first assuring that their long term health effects would not be serious. JAD