Why You Should Fear Your Sofa, Baby Stroller and Nursing Pillow

For good or ill, California often leads the nation's social and cultural trends and legal standards. California's passion for organic, local food, for example, has spread across the nation. When the state demanded lower vehicle emissions, manufacturers rushed to produce vehicles compliant with California's regulations. With nearly forty million people buying consumer products in one state, manufacturers across the nation, as well as in China, tailor their specifications to meet California's regulations.

Here's the "ill" part. In 1972, California passed legislation requiring flammability standards for upholstered furniture and baby products like high chairs, strollers and nursing pillows. Manufacturers met these new standards by using inexpensive, toxic and untested flame retardant chemicals. These flame retardants contained hazardous halogenated chemicals similar to PCB's and Dioxins, two of the most toxic classes of chemicals, Untested in humans, these brominated and chlorinated flame retardants can cause cancer, birth defects, neurological and reproductive or endocrine disruption in every animal species studied. As a result, one state's law has become the de facto standard for the country and poses a serious threat to everyone in the nation. Californians, in fact, have earned the dubious honor of having the highest amount of toxic flame retardant chemicals in their bodies of any people on the planet.

Environmental health experts speak about "the body burden," of the many dangerous chemicals we ingest that compromise our health. Once you bring these products into your home, the flame retardant chemicals, which are not chemically yoked to the upholstery foam , escape as dust into your living room and bedroom, adding millions of pounds of toxic chemicals to homes across the country. This toxic household dust, according to research studies, not only enters our bodies, but also contaminates soil, water and ends up in our food.

Most people are blissfully unaware of these flame retardants. Across the country you see people who are worried about dangerous toxins carrying their "BPA-free" water bottles. But they are unaware of the pounds of potential endocrine disrupters and carcinogens floating around their living rooms and bedrooms.

Just ask Arlene Blum, a 64-year old Berkeley scientist who became famous as the first woman to climb most of Mount Everest in 1976, who led the first all-women's ascent of Annapurna in 1978, and is the leading scientific advisor fighting against dangerous flame retardant chemicals. Blum, who received a doctorate in biophysical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, recently founded a non-profit organization, The Green Science Policy Institute, that provides unbiased scientific information to government, industry, and non-governmental organizations about chemicals used in consumer products in order to protect the health of people and the planet.

Her first major effort attempted to decrease toxics began in 1977. Her research and an article she wrote for the prestigious journal Science helped convince the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban a fire retardant known as Tris that damaged DNA and was absorbed into children's bodies from their sleepwear.

She then tried to force chemical companies to prove that their chemicals pose no danger to human health. Most Americans don't know that companies are not required to prove that their chemicals were safe for human health. Writing in Science in 2007, editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy noted that "In Europe, the chemical industry is required to establish safety before a product can continue to be marketed." Not so in the United States, where the EPA or consumers must first prove harm. Kennedy supported Blum's effort to "ban the use of the most toxic fire retardants from furniture and bedding unless the manufacturers can show safety. Not surprisingly, (sciencemag.org Vol 318 23 Nov. 2007) chemical manufacturers launched a fear campaign in opposition." As a result of heavy lobbying, and considerable funding for the opposition, the legislation was defeated in 2008.