Is Your Couch Toxic?

Posted by Alex Jung at 3:31 PM on September 10, 2007.

American consumers have more to worry about. In addition to the dangers of kids playing with toys coated with lead paint, are couches infused with chemicals that can cause a number of bodily harms -- from cancer to reproductive trouble. Furniture is now on the list of ordinary objects that make the average home a veritable minefield of toxins.

Co-sponsoring organizations Making Our Milk Safe (MOMS) and Friends of the Earth are supporting passage of California's AB-706, which would ban the further use of brominated and chlorinated fire retardants (BFRs and CFRs) often used in furniture. Other safer alternatives exist, and could open the door to Green Chemicals in the future. Over the past 30 years, certain chemicals within the family of toxins were banned, but this merely prompted companies to switch to another type of BFR or CFR. The legislation calls for a ban of these chemicals altogether. The video to the right is part of their Killer Couch campaign to raise awareness regarding this issue.

AB-706 is also better known as the Crystal Golden-Jefferson Furniture Safety and Fire Prevention Act, named in memory of a firefighter who died of non-Hodgkins lymphona, a disease common to firefighters that has been linked to dioxin, a carcinogen that's activated in serious fires.

There's a stark contrast between U.S. and E.U. manufactured products where better standards in the latter leads to healthier inhabitants. Concerning the use of flame retardant chemicals for example, a 2003 study done by the Environmental Working Group demonstrated with a small sample that U.S. women have 75 times the fire retardant chemicals in their breast milk as European women. And there is another link between infected breast milk and a genital birth defect in infant boys.

The old adage, you are what you eat still holds true, but also includes what you wear, where you sit, and any number of mundane activities. Passage of this legislation is a first step in creating greener chemicals to create a greener world.

Tagged as: toxins, green, furniture