As everyone pressing for non-toxic personal care products is probably aware, Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., dropped the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 in the House’s hopper last month.

Now begins the hard work of moving the bill through Congress. It won’t be easy. Powerful forces are arrayed against changing the status quo, which is, essentially, no regulation.

As the national conversation over this issue intensifies, everyone who is seriously involved in the discussion will want the facts. They are persistent things, facts. They can cut through clouds of rhetoric and dispel many a false claim.

You can read the legislation for yourself at this link. Or if you’re like most people and you’re multi-tasking, Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which EWG helped launch, have an easy button for you. Here is the Campaign’s section-by-section analysis of the bill.

There’s a lot to like about the bill, but our hope is that Section 614, requiring safety testing of cosmetic ingredients, is enacted as it is written. It seems obvious that chemicals mixed into personal care products or that crop up as adulterants should be tested for their impact on human health. Unfortunately, they’re not – yet.

EWG strongly supports cosmetics companies that strive to make the safest possible products. Unfortunately, with major gaps in current cosmetics law, some manufacturers don’t always choose the safest ingredients. The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 would help close these gaps.

Current law requires a company to post a warning on any product whose safety has not been substantiated. But the law does not define safety or require that companies document their (highly variable) decisions on what is safe enough to sell.

The 2010 bill goes one important step further than current law. It would require companies to submit to the Food and Drug Administration the studies they use to substantiate safety. This important advance in transparency will help ensure that any companies currently cutting corners on safety will improve their practices.

Among other provisions, each cosmetic manufacturer would be required, for the first time, to register with the FDA and to provide the agency with product ingredient lists. This will give the agency for the first time a full record of the many thousands of chemicals used by the industry.

The bill has caused quite a stir. In particular, some smaller companies have expressed concerns about the resources that would be required to comply with the proposed law.

However, the bill’s authors have included several provisions to make it easier for small companies comply with the new, basic safety standards for cosmetics:

• Registration fees would be required only of companies with gross annual receipts exceeding $1 million.
• FDA would be required to make public all health and safety studies it receives from every manufacturer. This means that small businesses would have access to studies currently thought to be held unpublished by a wide range of manufacturers, including major companies with extensive libraries of unpublished research. This new font of information should help all manufacturers make safer products.
• Ingredient suppliers would be required to provide all available health and safety studies available for their products to any manufacturer requesting the information. Small businesses in particular would benefit from this provision.
• The FDA would be required to publish a list of ingredients it deems to be Safe Without Limit (SWL). These would be chemicals that the agency found to be safe in any amount, in any product.

At EWG, we’re sure the debate will continue. We expect to hear from many more companies. But we hope that before cosmetics makers react to the bill’s new standards, each one will give the proposal a careful, thoughtful read and consider what the bill requires that it is already doing – and its competitors aren’t.

We think the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 would help level the playing field and bring all companies up to the high standard that only some meet now.

By David Andrews, EWG Senior Scientist, and Nils Bruzelius, Executive Editor

One hundred and six days later, it finally appears that the gusher in the Gulf has been tamed, plugged at the top and soon to be plugged at the bottom. Today (Aug. 5), the government says that three-fourths of the unprecedented discharge of crude oil is gone from the rich, warm waters of the Gulf, indicating that the first act of the vast, horrendous floating experiment is winding down.

Let’s hope they’re right, but let’s not forget that, in fact, 50 percent of the oil is still there, either dispersed or in its original form. It’s in the water column, in rapidly thinning sheens on the surface, in the sediments below, perhaps hidden in the coastal marshes and tissues of the region’s marine life. And the 26 percent that’s still in its original form — just less visible — amounts to nearly 1.3 million barrels (53.5 million gallons). That’s nearly five times as much as spilled from the Exxon Valdez.

And then there is the matter of the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants that petroleum giant BP pumped onto and into the Gulf to try to limit the impact of the toxic oil.  Now that the spill is apparently ended, EPA has just publicized the results of its second round of testing. It concluded that these chemicals, used in unprecedented volume, had similar acute toxicity to the alternatives and was no more toxic than untreated oil when mixed with Louisiana crude.

It’s great to have more information and it’s fortunate that the dispersant BP used was evidently not much more toxic than other options.  But here at the Environmental Working Group, we don’t think that luck is an effective chemicals policy.

The government is saying that the worst is over, and that the remaining oil – wherever it is – is unlikely to do much additional damage.

But there’s much left to do, including finishing the cleanup as well as possible and gathering the data that will let us fully understand the consequences of this spill, the efficacy of the cleanup, and, hopefully, ensure that the nation is better prepared for the next one.

“I think we don’t know yet the full impact of this spill on the ecosystem of the people of the Gulf,” Dr. Jane Lubchenko, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told The New York Times this week.

No kidding.

The job of collecting and understanding the data has barely begun, but it’s certainly not too soon to be laying out the questions that NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies need to answer – must answer – before the next such hydrocarbon disaster unfolds. Here are just a few:

• What will be the ultimate toll of the Macondo blowout on the environment, on marine life and on people’s health, both from the oil itself and the dispersants?
• Did the dispersants limit the ecological consequences, or perhaps make them worse?
• Was the chemical mixture in the dispersants the most effective, least toxic formulation? Was it used in the right amounts and applied in the least damaging ways?
• If all but 26 percent of the oil has already disappeared from sight, what about the dispersed oil and the dispersants? What has become of them, and with what effects?
• In a report released Wednesday, government agencies said the chemicals dispersed just 8 percent of the oil, a surprisingly small number to some. Was that the best they could do?
• Since we won’t be free of our dependence on fossil fuels any time soon, will industry and the government be any better prepared to cope than they were this time? How can we reduce the risk that supposedly fail-safe devices like blowout preventers will not in fact fail, and to limit the damage when they do?

The EPA and other government agencies must not rest until they’ve answered these and many other questions with the best data they can gather from this disaster, a job that will take months and years.  The EPA can’t afford to wait until the next disaster happens to do test the chemicals that might be used to fight it.  And the nation can’t afford to confront the next such catastrophe with as little solid information as we had this time.

You stand in line with your latte, your tube of toothpaste or your cart of groceries, you hand over your cash or credit card to the cashier, and he hands you back the receipt. You check that the amount looks right, then stuff it in your pocket or purse. Maybe you pull it out later to make a record of your purchase and then toss it in the wastebasket or slip it into a file. And then — you forget about it.

You should give that little scrap of paper a second thought.

This spring, researchers at Environmental Working Group collected 36 samples of cash register receipts from fast food restaurants, big retailers, grocery stores, gas stations and post offices in seven states and the District of Columbia and had them tested by a renowned lab.  The lab found that 40 percent had high levels of the endocrine-disrupting chemical BPA, which has been the target of nationwide efforts to ban it in food and beverage containers, especially those used by babies and children. Animal tests show that BPA, a plastics hardener that is also a synthetic estrogen, can cause reproductive and behavioral abnormalities and lower intellectual ability, as well as setting the stage for cancers, obesity, diabetes, asthma and heart disease.

The tainted receipts tested by EWG came from a variety of well-known outlets including McDonald’s, KFC, CVS, Walmart, Safeway and Whole Foods.

The tests also showed that the BPA on the receipts could easily rub off onto the hands of anyone who handles them. That’s a potential worry for shoppers but even more so for the tens of thousands of store and restaurant workers who handled hundreds of receipts daily. Federal data analyzed by EWG shows that retail workers carry an average of 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than other adults.

As Jane Houlihan, EWG’s Senior Vice-President for Research, put it:

“A typical employee at any large retailer who runs the register could handle hundreds of the contaminated receipts in a single day at work. While we do not know exactly what this means for people’s health, it’s just one more path of exposure to this chemical that seems to bombard every single person.”

The source of the BPA is the paper used in these cash registers. This “thermal paper” is coated with a dye and a second chemical, which is often BPA. When a cash register imprints on the paper, its heats brings out the black lettering, avoiding the need to have ink in the printer.

EWG’s testing found amounts of EPA on receipts that were 250 to 1,000 times greater than in the more widely discussed sources of BPA exposure, especially canned foods, baby bottles and infant formula. Because the BPA in food is completely ingested, this remains by far the most worrisome route of exposure. It is unclear how much of the BPA that rubs off on skin gets into the bloodstream, but it’s likely to be a fraction of the total BPA on the paper.

What is clear, however, is that it wouldn’t be hard to get rid of the BPA in thermal paper. In fact, a number of the outlets sampled by EWG issued receipts that had no BPA or only trace amounts. They included such well-known companies as Target, Starbucks and Bank of America ATMs. And some big chains used BPA-laced paper in some outlets but not others. If they can get along without BPA-laden paper, there’s no reason everyone can’t.

For that matter, the leading U.S. maker of thermal paper, Appleton Papers Inc., no longer incorporates BPA in its products. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a program to evaluate the safety and availability of alternatives to BPA in thermal paper. (LINK)

EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook has written to the top executives of major retailers whose outlets issued BPA-laden receipts that figured in our study, urging them to switch to BPA-free alternatives for the sake of their employees and customers.

In the meantime, EWG has some advice for consumers:

• Don’t let infants or children handle receipts.
• Avoid paper receipts entirely when electronic or email alternatives are available.
• If you save receipts, keep them in a separate envelope.
• After handling receipts, be sure to wash your hands thoroughly before preparing and eating food (and that’s a good practice even when you haven’t handled receipts).
• Don’t use alcohol-based hand cleaners after handling receipts; they can increase absorption of BPA through the skin.
• Don’t recycle receipts and other thermal paper. BPA residues will contaminate recycled paper.

(By the way, it’s easy to check whether a receipt is printed on thermal paper. Just rub it with a coin. The heat of the friction will discolor thermal paper, but not conventional paper.)

Over the past decade, Environmental Working Group has uncovered either hazardous or untested cosmetics ingredients everywhere our research has taken us — in product tests, in ingredient label surveys and even in people.

In our biomonitoring studies, we sent blood and urine samples from 20 teenage girls from across the country to the laboratory.  It turned out they were tainted with an average of 13 potential hormone-disrupting preservatives, plasticizers and other cosmetic chemicals. In umbilical cord blood from 7 of 10 newborn babies, we found synthetic musk fragrances that had crossed the placenta from mother to infant to pollute the developing child before birth.

Our researchers have identified 500 products sold in the U.S. that contain ingredients that are banned in cosmetics in Japan, Canada or Europe.  Nearly 100 products have been found to contain ingredients the industry itself has declared unsafe for use in fragrance. Perhaps most disconcerting, our investigations have found that 99 percent of all personal care products are made with at least one and usually several ingredients that have never been assessed for safety by the government or any other publicly accountable institution.

The federal Food and Drug Administration oversees cosmetic safety, but under the shackles of a 1976 law, the agency lacks the authority to review the safety of products before they are sold, or to require recalls of those it knows are harmful.

There’s no doubt Americans want safer products. EWG’s Skin Deep cosmetics safety database logs between 1 and 2 million searches monthly, conducted by people seeking simpler, safer cosmetics from among the more than 60,000 products in our lists. Consumers armed with this information are already driving changes.  Many companies are removing suspect chemicals from their wares as a result. More than a thousand have pledged to make safer products through the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, where EWG is a founding member.

And now, federal legislation proposed this week by Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) would close major gaps in the law – finally.   This measure would give FDA real authority to ensure that personal care products sold in the U.S. meet a basic standard of safety.

This measure is long overdue.  We stand with Reps. Schakowsky, Baldwin and Markey as they embark on the tough work necessary to move this legislation, so that someday Americans will be able to go to the store and buy shampoo, moisturizers, body wash and other grooming products with full confidence they aren’t laced with chemicals whose effects on health are unknown or downright dangerous.

But at least he’s fictional.

Dioxin is all too real. EPA’s own timeline of its labors to establish a safety standard for human exposure to dioxins dates back to September 1985 – and actually understates the glacial pace of efforts to reduce people’s exposure to this omnipresent pollutant.

Environmental Working Group wants EPA to wrap up this phase of its deliberations and set a concrete safety standard. That number – technically known as a “reference dose” or safe daily dose — would be a voluntary guideline, not a regulation. But pollution control regulations that carry the force of law can’t be fashioned until the safety standard is nailed down.

Scientists have been researching health dangers associated with dioxin, actually a family of highly toxic industrial byproducts, since 1949. (These chemicals can form naturally, but most of the pollution encountered in the industrial world comes from waste incineration and certain manufacturing processes such as paper bleaching, smelting and pesticide manufacturing.) Dioxin was in the headlines weekly, sometimes daily, back in the 1970s, when discoveries of decades of heedless industrial dumping and a spectacular chemical plant explosion in Seveso, Italy, aroused public outrage. Also, one of the major scandals involving the U.S. military’s use of the potent defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War was that some of the millions of gallons of the stuff had been contaminated with a particularly pernicious member of the dioxin family — 2,3,7,8- tetrachlorodibenzo para dioxin, or TCDD, exposing untold numbers of servicemen and women and civilians to this dangerous chemical.

By 1981, U.S. government scientists had declared that TCDD was “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” In 1997, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) used an even stronger and more definitive term, labeling TCDD a “known human carcinogen.” In May 2000, the U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program tried to follow suit, based on its own deliberations over 19 years. A pro-industry group fought that move in court but a federal appeals court rejected its arguments, allowing the U.S. government to embrace the international community’s position that TCDD causes cancer in humans.

But how much dioxin pollution is a realistic danger to human health? Finding a level of exposure at which the risk approaches the vanishing point is the task of the EPA. The agency has been wrestling with this critical but complicated question for close to 30 years. Every step has been marked by a battle with industries whose operations generate dioxin. In 1980s and early 1990s, the paper industry led the resistance. On Oct. 27, 1987, The Washington Post published a story by Michael Weisskopf, headlined Paper Industry Campaign Defused Reaction to Dioxin Contamination, that described the American Paper Institute’s expensive and successful campaign to hobble EPA’s efforts to rein in dioxin pollution from paper mills.

More recently, EPA has been buried under objections from the chlorine and vinyl industries, companies with old, polluting equipment, and proprietors of fouled industrial and military-linked sites that would require expensive cleanups. Even certain communities and politicians have opposed stringent measures out of concern for excessive cleanup costs, job losses or diminished property values.

In May, the EPA took a giant step closer to resolving the debate by releasing a massive scientific report on dioxin, for the first time proposing a specific human safety limit for TCDD of seven-tenths of a picogram — a trillionth of a gram — per kilogram of body weight, per day.

That is an unimaginably small amount. A picogram is a thousandth of a nanogram.

But in fact, according to EWG calculations, EPA would be justified in trying to set the bar even lower. EWG analysis has determined that nine different animal studies conducted between 1973 and 2008 show harm at dioxin levels even lower than the figure EPA has put on the table.

By a number of measures, Americans are significantly overexposed to TCDD and other members of the dioxin family. According to studies cited by the EPA report and reviewed by EWG scientists, the public may be exposed to as much as 1,200 times more dioxin contamination in common foods than the amount EPA considers safe as a cancer risk. Because dioxins are also considered endocrine system-disrupting chemicals, they may pose a particular danger to developing children. Studies that have found breast milk to contain traces of dioxins are especially worrisome. EWG’s analysis calculates that a nursing infant may consume as much as 77 times the amount of dioxin the EPA has defined as harmless to the endocrine and immune systems.

EWG has not recommended that EPA to go back to the drawing board and come up with an even smaller number. That may be advisable someday soon, but at the moment, EWG believes that EPA should get on with it. The review process is tortuous as it is.

This week, the EPA Science Advisory Board meets for three days to consider the EPA report. The document will also be subjected to external “peer review” by independent experts. Groups from industry, public health and environmental causes and private citizens are being invited to weigh in. Once agency officials digest all the commentary and advice, a lively debate will undoubtedly ensue, likely involving the White House, the Defense Department, the Food and Drug Administration and other key agencies.

Cleanups are expensive, no doubt about it. But health care costs are an even bigger drain on the economy. It’s impossible to quantify the intangible personal toll on Americans living with serious disorders triggered by chronic exposure to dioxins. But we’re sure it’s too high, and it has gone on too long.

With money, of course. As you might expect from an industry lobby, it’s all about money.

The city in the crosshairs is San Francisco, one of the nation’s great historic and cultural centers. The Cellular Telephone Industry Association, CTIA for short, is threatening to stop holding conventions there and urging other electronics makers to join its economic boycott.

All because the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted 10-to-1 to require that cell phone retailers post the radiation output of various cell phones. The San Francisco lawmakers acted after the Environmental Working Group published an interactive Cell Phone Radiation Report detailing how emissions levels varied widely among more than 1,000 cell phones and smartphones.

Maureen Dowd on cell phone radiation

In a column headlined “Are Cells the New Cigarettes?,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was warned by CTIA lobbyists that they might withdraw the industry’s convention, scheduled for October 2010, and that they intended to urge Apple, Cisco and other computer and electronics giants to shun the city by the Bay.

“Shame on them, to threaten the city,” Newsom said, according to Dowd. “It’s about as shortsighted as one could get in terms of a brand.”

Electronics industry adopts tobacco lobby tactics

The best defense is usually a good offense. The real question is, why is the cell phone industry so defensive? Why is it taking pages from the tobacco lobby’s playbook? Intimidation and bluster, as we all know, didn’t work so well for Big Tobacco.

It’s not as if the San Francisco government or EWG is advising people to stop buying and using cell phones. The city’s law mandates that cell phone makers and vendors disclose in retail stores what they are already required by law to tell the Federal Communications Commission — and the public. The only difference is, the information will be posted so that potential cell phone buyers can read it in stores, instead of being forced to burrow into the fine print of pamphlets, websites, technical manuals or legal filings.

EWG takes the position that until the many uncertainties about cell phone radiation are resolved, “we think it’s smart for consumers to buy phones with the lowest emissions.” To that end, EWG’s interactive database helps consumers make informed choices for themselves and their children.

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle quotes CTIA Vice President John Walls as saying, rather sulkily, “We felt they sent us a message about how they felt about the industry and the technology. And if that’s how the city feels, then we have to look at other viable options.” The industry lobby’s reflexive stance has been to deny the slightest possibility that cell phone radiation, high, low or mid-range, could ever be harmful. After the Board of Supervisors acted, Walls asserted, “The ordinance will potentially mislead consumers, suggesting that some phones are ‘safer’ than others.”

The fact is, nobody knows. The world’s leading experts on radiofrequency emissions, many of whom have been cooperating in a global, decade-long series of studies on the possible public health effects of wireless communications, have come up with inconclusive but troubling scientific evidence that long-term exposure to radiofrequency energy emitted by wireless devices could be linked to cancer, benign tumors and other health problems.

EU financing new study on child, teen cell phone use

Much more research is essential. Scientists continue to labor at the vexing mysteries of radiofrequency emissions, particularly those that touch on the potentially greater impact of this relatively new technology on children’s thinner skulls. The European Union is funding a broad new study that, the lead scientist has announced, will “investigate the risk of brain tumors from mobile phone use in childhood and adolescence.”

Maybe industry lobbyists are worried because discussion of the possible risks of cell phone radiation is no longer confined to wonks, geeks and earnest enviros. It’s now part of the national conversation. We all care, because, as the industry’s own figures show, very few of us want to do without our cell phones.

Still — the questions we’re asking aren’t softballs. They deserve answers

Vogue Magazine weighs in

Take the July issue of Vogue Magazine, the first and last words in all things haute and luxe, whose audience of high-powered professionals demands, and gets, serious, sophisticated reporting on personal health topics. Vogue examines the cell phone issue under the headline “Wake-up Call,” with the subhead: “With recent research raising questions about dangers of cell phone radiation, especially to children, Robert Sullivan wonders why more people aren’t listening.”

Why indeed? Sullivan, who wrote the Vogue article, interviewed EWG senior scientist Olga Naidenko about comparisons between lung cancer among cigarette smokers and brain cancer among cell phone users. His conclusion:

“Making all cell phones safer is not like asking for a mission to Mars. It’s doable.”

So why doesn’t the cell phone industry just do it?

Earlier this week, I joined a wide array of public health advocates to thank and honor Maryland Delegate James Hubbard and Senator Brian Frosh for their leadership in the successful effort to ban the plastics chemical BPA from drinking containers statewide.  The lawmakers received the “Children’s Health Advocate of the Year” award for their effective advocacy in the face of continued federal inaction on this dangerous chemical.

In addition to Environmental Working Group, those participating in the event were Maryland PIRG, MomsRising.org, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the Maryland Nurses Association, the Black Nurses Association of Baltimore and many others.

With Governor Martin O’Malley’s signature in April, Maryland joined Connecticut, Minnesota, Washington State and Wisconsin, along with several counties and localities, in taking action to regulate BPA.

As we’ve seen elsewhere, this was not an easy fight, but in the end the outcome was decisive.  After Delegate Hubbard led the way for several years, Senator Frosh joined the effort and together they were able to secure unanimous votes to ban BPA in both chambers of the Maryland legislature.  EWG supporters played an invaluable role, sending more than 500 letters to legislators urging a yes vote on the bill and more than 400 to thank Governor O’Malley for signing it into law.

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to restrict the use of BPA in canned food and other food packaging, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has listed the plasticizer as a “chemical of concern.” BPA is used to harden plastic containers and is an ingredient in epoxy resin used to coat the interiors of virtually all metal food cans manufactured in North America.

Thanks to the leadership of these two legislators and the determined advocacy of public health, environmental, mothers’ and public interest organizations, Maryland children will now have much less exposure to this harmful chemical.

By Dave Andrews, Ph.D., EWG senior scientist, and Nils Bruzelius, executive editor

It took almost a month. After weeks of complaints that BP and its supplier were stonewalling requests for a complete ingredients list for the dispersants being dumped on the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Environmental Protection Agency posted the information with no fanfare on its website Wednesday (June 9). A slightly different version of the list appeared on the website of Nalco Energy Services, which makes the stuff.

There were no great surprises, but releasing the information when you’re a million gallons into the game made a mockery of any effort to research and evaluate safer alternatives, efficacy and long term effects. Instead of more comprehensive premarket safety testing, the experiment is being run on a monumental scale in the Gulf of Mexico. Now all we can do is wait and see what the long-term impact will be on marine life, the larger environment and on people who come in contact with the contaminated waters.

Greenwire, Energy and Environment Daily’s online environmental news outlet, reported that two of the hazardous ingredients in Nalco’s Corexit 9500 formula had been disclosed previously. A third one disclosed Wednesday turns out to be dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent, which appears on both lists under a different name.

Nalco had earlier placed the ingredients in Corexit 9500 under a cloak of “confidential business information” or CBI, which under current law barred EPA from releasing the details on the grounds that they would give away a valuable trade secret to the company’s competitors.

But as Greenwire noted, the mere listing of the ingredients didn’t include one piece of potentially important information: how much of each one is contained in the Corexit 9500 formula. It quoted Nalco spokesman Charlie Pajor as saying:

“Having the full ingredients out there is only part of the information that someone wanting to copy the product would need.”

That was an interesting admission in light of the chemical industry’s insistence that it needs the right to claim CBI, which keeps the public from learning the chemical identity of 17,000 chemicals on EPA’s inventory, in order to protect manufacturers’ trade secrets. It makes you wonder whether disclosure of these chemical identities, which is vitally important to cleanup workers in the Gulf — and to emergency responders, research scientists and the public – is really such a threat to these companies’ intellectual property, and their profits.

The release of the Corexit ingredients came on the same day that The Associated Press published a nice bit of reporting on BP’s 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill, documenting that the plan was “riddled with omissions and glaring errors.”

As a prime example, BP listed Professor Peter Lutz of the University of Miami as a wildlife specialist whom the company could consult if the worst happened. There’s just one little problem, AP reported. Lutz died four years ago. And he hadn’t been in Miami for 16 years before that.

BP’s 582-page regional spill plan and its 52-page site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig also had wrong names and phone numbers for other specialists and listed marine mammal stranding network offices that are no longer functioning, AP reported. Not to mention:

” There are other wildly false assumptions in the documents. BP’s proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.”

Nice work, AP!

Over the past decade, dozens of imports from China and other countries have been recalled because they were laced with lead, cadmium and other clearly hazardous chemicals.

Today, federal and state regulators are focusing on the subtler dangers of other chemicals in common consumer goods. As Congress debates how to reform the 33-year-old federal law on toxic chemicals controls, it’s crucial that the resulting law empower regulators to bar contaminant-laden imported products as well as those made in the U.S. Otherwise, the deck will be stacked against some American manufacturers and in favor of their overseas competitors who ignore concerns about the substances in question.

Take the case of polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), a family of toxic chemicals used since the 1970’s as fire retardants in foam and plastics. Over the past decade, PBDEs have been found in many Americans’ bodies and even in polar bears. Researchers have reported that a single day’s exposure to these chemicals can cause permanent brain damage in laboratory animals.

The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) grandfathered PBDEs. Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), frustrated in its efforts to regulate dangerous PBDEs out of use, has negotiated voluntary phase-out agreements with U.S. manufacturers for all 3 formulations – penta-, octa- and decaBDE. The first two mixtures are no longer manufactured in the U.S. or imported here. The form known as deca- is in a three-year phase-out that began last December.

However, because the law makes no mention of controlling risky chemicals by means of voluntary legal pacts as opposed to regulations, which carry the force of law, EPA appears to have no authority to bar finished products containing PBDEs from being imported into the U.S. These chemicals and products incorporating them are still being made in China and other foreign countries. Furniture imports, for instance, can legally contain these hazardous chemicals.

Another notorious example: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as “C8,” a toxic synthetic used to manufacture Teflon and other non-stick coatings. When overheated, non-stick pans can release fumes containing PFOA and other perfluorocarbons (PFCs). Pollution from factories handling PFOA has proved a major health concern in affected communities. Because of widespread use of Teflon-coated cookware and fabrics, nearly all Americans tested by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have measureable PFOA and other PFCs in their bodies.

In 2006, EPA and eight major companies in the industry agreed to eliminate factory emissions and product content of PFOA and related PFCs by 2015. But foreign-made cookware with non-stick coatings and other non-stick products are readily available in American stores. There is no way to know whether these products contain PFOA. And there appears to be little EPA could do, because the PFOA almost certainly comes from foreign companies that have not agreed to the phase-out.

In short, the current situation is dangerous for American consumers and unfair to American companies and workers.

A bill now being drafted by key House leaders Henry Waxman, D-CA, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Bobby Rush, D-IL, consumer protection subcommittee chairman, would clarify EPA’s powers to restrict chemicals in imported finished goods.

This would improve U.S. manufacturers’ competitive position in the global marketplace. In the fierce competition for retail sales, Chinese companies and other foreign manufacturers would no longer enjoy an advantage over U.S. companies that try to do the right thing.

We believe this proposed reform is long overdue. American manufacturers shouldn’t be subject to more constraints than foreign companies. Foreign imports shouldn’t be riskier than U.S.-made products. Consumers want good values, but they also expect American store shelves to be filled with safe goods.