1. Protecting our health from toxic chemicals
Creating a Healthy Tomorrow
Elizabeth Saunders
Massachusetts Director 1

2. In recent years, an expanding body of evidence has linked the pollutants and man-made chemicals in our environment to cancer, declining sperm counts, birth defects and other diseases on the rise.

3. Cancer and the Environment
1 in 3 women will get cancer in their lifetimes
1 in 2 men will get cancer in their lifetimes
80 percent of all cancer cases have been linked to environmental causes (July 2004, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

4. Change of incidence of breast cancer over time:
1940
1 in 20
1994
1 in 9
2002
1 in 8
2004
1 in 7

5. Toxic chemicals also linked to…
Parkinson’s Disease
Learning Disabilities
Early puberty
Thyroid disease
Birth Defects
Asthma
Infertility
Diabetes
ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease)
And on…and on…

6. Since WWII more than 85,000 synthetic chemicals have been introduced into our environment.
Amazingly, industry and the federal government have failed to test more than 90 percent of these chemicals for potential links to cancer, birth defects and other health impacts.

7. ?
Unfortunately, we’re exposed to toxic chemicals in lots of ways that most people don’t expect.
For example in pesticides used on our lawns or on school grounds, cleaning products, children’s toys, personal care products and cosmetics, children’s lunch bags and shower curtains, just to name a few.
All of these products and many more that we use every day are made from lots of chemicals - some of them benign, but many that are linked to diseases such as cancer, asthma or lupus or to learning or developmental disabilities.
I could go into detail about any of these things, but I’m going to focus most of this presentation on on cleaning chemicals.

8. PVC = Polymers + Additives (Phthlates, Lead, Cadmium, other additives)
Before I get to cleaning products, I can’t come here and not mention vinyl.
Vinyl, or PVC is everywhere in our daily lives. It’s in
shower curtains, cars, furniture, upholstery, plastic wrap, children’s toys, handbags, clothing, windowshades, siding, wall coverings, flooring, and on and on and on.
SHOW SOME VINYL PRODUCTS
Vinyl by itself is bad enough - factories that make vinyl put out very toxic pollution that has made people who live near them sick, and when it gets burned in a trash incinerator or a house fire for example, it pus out very toxic fumes - a chemical called Dioxin that is now being found in milk and meats.
But Vinyl doesn’t stand on its own, it has other chemicals in it. When PVC polymers are first made, they are very stiff, so in order to make shower curtains, toys like big round balls, teethers, raincoats, bibs, and other things, manufacturers make it flexible by adding chemicals. Phthalates are a kind of softener added to PVC to make it flexible. Also, some of the heavy metals we just saw listed, like cadmium and lead, are added to make the PVC durable.

9. Personal Care Products & Cosmetics
Of the 10,500 chemicals in cosmetics, only 11% have been screened for safety

10. Examples of Toxic Chemicals in Cosmetics
Found In
Human Health Concerns
PHTHALATES
Deodorants, hair styling & nail products, perfumes
Known repro/dev toxin & hormone disruptor
TRICLOSAN
Hand and body soaps, creams and lotions
Bi-products: carcinogen, repro/dev toxin toxin
PROPYLENE GLYCOL
Shampoos, soaps, lotions, lip gloss
Penetration enhancer
FORMALDEHYDE
Shampoos, creams and lotions, hair styling products, nail polishes
Known human carcinogen, repro/dev toxin toxin
Phthalates can be found in nail polish and fragrances. Biomonitoring studies—test that literally measure the pollution in people by looking at blood, urine and breastmilk--show that most of us have phthalates in our bodies, and including newborn babies.
Phthalates are also used to soften plastics. Our colleagues have recently made strides in beginning to get these chemicals out of children's products.
Please refer to the Campaign Web site for more info about these and other toxic ingredients. 10

12. They are also ineffective
at stopping fires

14. Regrettable substitutions:
BPA

15. How does this all connect? exposed to industrial chemicals
We are exposed to chemicals from different sources on a daily basis. Sometimes when we think of environmental health issues we think of an industrial plant dumping chemicals into the ground in a community, and people getting sick as a direct effect. This is certainly a real example of environmental health injustice. But chemical trespass into our bodies from products is too. In this case, though, there is not just one source of exposure, which can make it harder to visualize the amount of chemicals we take in daily, or show direct cause and effect.
Will using moisturizer with an ingredient linked to cancer directly cause cancer? Not necessarily, and it would be especially unlikely if we only used one product. But think about it this way: We just counted how many products most people use in a single day, morning and nighttime…
Now multiply that number by days in a week, weeks in a year… Combine it with other low-dose exposures like the diesel exhaust we breathe on the way to work, the toxins in drinking water, the pesticides on food and the flame retardants in our furniture and electronics.
Add it all up and that’s one big, chemical soup.
We are repeatedly
exposed to industrial chemicals
from many different sources on a daily basis and the cumulative effects are difficult to pin point 15

16. Outdated Chemical Safety System
Toxic Substances
Control Act of 1976
62,000 chemicals ‘grand-fathered’
EPA has required testing on just over 200 chemicals
5 chemicals restricted
EPA tried to restrict asbestos and failed
Updated in 2016 but still flawed.

17. We Can NOT Shop Our Way Out Of This
Changing the market is good… 17

18. Online resources Women’s voices for the Earth www.womensvoices.org
Detox Me App (Silent Spring Institute)
Environmental Working Group 18