Maine Morning Sentinel, Staff
Published May 14, 2006
On Mother's Day, we give thanks for the great gifts bestowed on us by our mothers -- from life itself, to love, direction, dinner every night and a few thousand loads of laundry thrown in for good measure.
Those are the gifts our mothers choose to give us, the ones that helped us grow and thrive. But what if there were other things bestowed on us by our mothers -- things that could harm us? Not willingly, not wittingly -- but handed down to us, nonetheless?
As we make our way through the first decade of the 21st century, that's precisely the situation we face. In a chilling subversion of the natural order in which mothers nurture their children, researchers have found that mothers now pass along to children the legacy of decades of use of potentially toxic industrial chemicals, through their blood and their breast milk. Mothers have become chemical conveyor belts, transmitting to their children the evidence of thousands of chemicals in use around us. Those chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, learning disabilities and other developmental problems, are no longer simply in our midst; they're in us. Our mothers never asked for this role.
The chemicals are used in industrial processes, to make the televisions, cosmetics, toys, frying pans and clothes we use every day. The Environmental Working Group assembled a group of mothers and daughters and conducted the latest in a series of studies looking at the so-called "body burden" of chemicals we carry. They found that study group's blood and urine samples contained an average of 35 consumer product ingredients, including flame retardants, plasticizers and stain-proof coatings. And alarmingly, all the daughters tested had more chemicals in common with their mothers than with a group of other women who were tested.
Now, this shouldn't be a problem, because all chemicals have to be proven safe before they can be used, right?
Wrong.
The federal law that regulates industrial chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act, was passed in 1976. But it gives the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, power to significantly regulate only those chemicals in commercial use after 1979 -- and the vast majority of chemicals in use today were in use prior to that cutoff date. Indeed, a University of Massachusetts publication states that "the EPA has been unable to use its regulatory powers to control the vast majority of chemicals on the market today ... the program for existing chemicals has been considered by many analysts and EPA officials to be a failure."
But there's good news for Mainers in this regard. Our leaders have recognized that if there is to be meaningful regulation of industrial chemicals, it's going to happen on a state level. We've got laws phasing out toxic mercury-containing products and requiring their recycling; the Legislature passed a law banning the sale of products containing certain fire retardant chemicals; the governor just formed a task for to promote safer chemicals in consumer products.
There's much more to be done, of course. The manufacturers of toxic fire retardants used in virtually every television in the state are fighting any further limits on their use -- despite the fact that there are cost-effective alternatives and computer monitor manufacturers have already phased out their use. The empaneling of a governor's task force is one thing; getting real, on-the-ground change out of their recommendations will take an enormous amount of political will.
Maine is not alone in its efforts; almost a dozen states have stepped into the breach left by federal inaction and are trying to grapple with regulation of industrial chemicals. And one Maine company has demonstrated that the marketplace itself can be a force for change in this realm: Interface Fabrics in Guilford is blazing a green path with a corporate policy that avoids using chemicals that have any hazardous properties. Their office divider cloth, for example, is woven out of plastic made from corn.
If there is one thing we must do on Mother's Day -- and in this regard, every day should be Mother's Day -- it is to honor our mothers. That act should include a fierce defense of a mother's virtually sacred role: To give life and health to her offspring. We should not pollute our earth, nor should we pollute our mothers.
