News Coverage
Senate Passes Bill to Phase Out Fire Retardants Added To Products
Published July 16, 2003
California would become the nation's first state to phase out two chemical fire retardants known to accumulate in the blood of mothers and their newborn children, under a bill passed Thursday by the state Senate.
The Senate voted 25-12 to ban materials coated with the flame retardants to be manufactured, distributed or sold in California by Jan. 1, 2008.
The legislation, affecting chemicals commonly used in furniture, electronics and other foam and plastic products, follows similar action by the European Union, which will ban their use next summer. Supporters hope it will spur a nationwide ban in the United States.
Environmentalists cheered the vote Thursday, calling it "historic," but lamented that "hundreds of millions more pounds" of the chemicals will accumulate in the environment before the ban occurs. Many companies, meanwhile, are already turning to other methods to fireproof their products.
The bill, which passed along party-line votes with Democrats prevailing and Republicans opposed, now returns to the Assembly for agreement to amendments and then to Gov. Gray Davis.
Davis spokesman Russell Lopez said Thursday the governor has no position on the bill. But Davis' Environmental Protection Agency chief, Winston Hickox, said last week the state should ban chemicals that raise "serious public health questions" in the face of federal inaction.
The bill's author, Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland, said she hopes the bill will trigger action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is studying effects of the chemicals commonly known as PBDEs, for polybrominated diphenyl ethers.
Chan said studies about chemicals found in breast milk of young mothers especially alarmed her.
"They have been known to cause nerve and brain damage, and we just can't take that risk for our children," she said.
Numerous studies cited by Hickox last week show that North American women have the highest levels of PBDE in the world and are nearing levels shown to damage memory, behavior and learning in laboratory mice. The chemicals, which remain in the environment for years and build up in the body over a lifetime, are similar to PCBs and DDT banned decades ago in the United States.
Last week, the Environmental Working Group also announced study results that showed rapidly escalating levels of PBDEs in fish in San Francisco Bay. The study, comparing fish caught by anglers last fall with similar fish in 1997, showed PBDE levels had doubled in halibut and tripled in striped bass, the two most commonly eaten Bay fish.
Bill Walker, the group's West Coast chief, said it's still a mystery how the chemicals get into the fish.
"Some believe the primary pollution path is runoff. And some cite dumping of electronic products," he said. "We really don't know. There are worldwide studies going and nobody's really nailed down what the exposure pathways are."
Under the bill, manufacturers in other states would not be able to sell products coated with the flame retardant in California.
"That's what we call the California effect," said Walker. "If California passes a law, national manufacturers have to follow suit."
A Washington, D.C., trade group allied with manufacturers, the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, couldn't be reached for comment.