The American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement yesterday, urging the federal government to update the 35-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and to start protecting our kids from hazardous chemicals. It’s about time pediatricians stand up for their patients. The statement published in the journal Pediatrics states “that the chemical-management policy in the United States be revised to protect children and pregnant women and to better protect other populations.” Read on to find out what pediatricians want to change.
With bisphenol-A, phthalates, and other nasty chemicals constantly questioned, pediatricians want the Environmental Protection Agency to take a closer look at the TSCA because these chemicals and tens of thousands of others have been developed since the Act went into effect in 1976, and little testing has taken place and the law has virtually gone unchanged.
“The current policy . . . really is virtually useless,” said Dr. Jerome Paulson, the paper’s author and medical director of the Child Health Advocacy Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “In the last couple of years we’ve had a ‘toxicant of the month’ situation,” he said. “Why aren’t these chemicals tested before they’re in the market so we . . . can know if they’re unlikely to do harm to the environment or to human beings?”
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