The Child Safe Chemicals Policy introduced by CEHN is a great policy to help protect children's health. This is a good article by CEHN outlining The Child Safe Chemicals Policy.
On Monday, March 12, 2007, CEHN, in partnership with CIEL and NET, brought together targeted key leaders within the health professional and public health communities to Washington, DC to engage around the issue of federal chemical safe policy reform. The "Child Safe Chemicals Policy" paper was provided as background for the meeting. (Children's Environmental Health Network)
Mounting scientific evidence points to widespread exposure to chemicals that can cause serious adverse impacts on human health, particularly for children and other vulnerable populations. Yet the existing legal framework for regulating commercial chemicals is effectively unable to identify these dangers and to take effective action to prevent continued threats to environmental health. As opposed to the regulation of pharmaceuticals and pesticides, the federal law governing industrial chemicals in the United States requires virtually no information on health or human exposure as a precondition for manufacture or sales. Even in cases of clear threats to public health, as in the case of asbestos, the burden of proof is so onerous that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has little choice but to negotiate voluntary agreements with manufacturers.
Recent international developments including a new European law and some global treaties to eliminate toxic chemicals provide promising examples of policy reforms that provide more health protections. The U.S. government is beginning to awake to the pressing need to modernize its approach to chemicals, including recognition of the special importance of children’s environmental health. This paper provides an overview of current statutes and regulations regulating chemicals and identifies some of the necessary changes to U.S. policies to help identify and eliminate chemicals that endanger children’s health and the public at large. (Information provided by Children's Environmental Health Network) (Physicians for the Environment)
We hope that we will see policy's against chemicals to protect our children's Health. We must come together and say "NO" to chemicals that may harm children and harm our environment.
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