Consumer Products
EWG offers you popular, easy-to-use guides to help you choose products and foods that are free of toxic ingredients, safe for your children and environmentally friendly.
Check out the New York Times for a rundown of the impressive environmental initiatives the nation's largest retailer is undertaking. Wal-Mart plans to double fuel economy on its delivery trucks, reduce energy use in its stores and minimize packaging.
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An Oakland group found lead in 27 soft vinyl lunchboxes in a recent study, a quarter of the products tested. The lead was on the surface of the plastic, where it could easily leach onto children's hands or food.
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In the past week, activists have pressed Teflon maker DuPont to clean up its act on two fronts. Environmental groups demanded that the company monitor groundwater around its local plant, the only one in the US that makes this indestructible, cancer-causing chemical, and the steeworkers' union urged carpet and clothing retailers and fast food companies to warn consumers that their products may be coated with chemicals that break down into DuPont's toxic Teflon chemical.
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Commissioner Thomas Moore of the federal government's Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) shares Environmental Working Group's (EWG) concern that children playing on decks, play sets and other structures made of arsenic-treated lumber may develop cancer later in life from arsenic that rubs off the wood and sticks to children's skin.
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As the Detroit News reports, Ford Motor Co. has again withheld evidence of safety problems with its SUVs and other vehicles. For Ford, it’s hardly an isolated incident.
Read MoreA new study presented at a meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicologists and Chemists links the Teflon chemical C8 [also known as PFOA] to elevated cancer rates. Researchers found higher levels of prostate cancer in men and cervical and uterine cancer in women exposed to C8 than in the general population.
Read MorePFOA is used to make PTFE, the Teflon in pans. However, scientific evidence points to fluorotelomers as the main source of the PFOA and other perfluorinated chemicals in Americans' blood. That fluorotelomers on coated paper food packaging break down into PFOA and other chemicals is a separate problem from PTFE and cookware. This source of PFOA is one that DuPont cannot control by reducing emissions or impurities in its products.
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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released the most comprehensive study to date of the health risks of arsenic-treated wood, which has been used for decades to build decks, playsets and other outdoor structures in backyards and parks nationwide.
Read MoreThe U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously today to deny a petition to ban the use of chromated copper arsenate (CCA) pressuretreated wood in playground equipment.
Read MoreEWG asks the CEOs of nine major fast food corporations to disclose the use of toxic nonstick chemicals in their packaging.
Read MoreA series of studies published beginning in the 1950s shows that DuPont has known for at least 50 years that Teflon fumes at relatively low temperatures can cause an acute illness known as polymer fume fever. In several studies DuPont recruited human volunteers and intentionally exposed them to Teflon fumes to the point of illness. The results of these studies suggest that people cooking on Teflon and other non-stick pans may be at risk.
Read MoreRead More----- Original Message -----
From: "Cheryl L Mitchell" < [email protected] >
To: [NAME REMOVED]Subject: Use of DuPont trademark
To Whom It May Concern:
Telfon-coated cookware poses a hazard when it is heated to high temperatures. EWG tests show that in 2 to 5 minutes on a conventional stovetop, cookware coated with Teflon and other non-stick surfaces can exceed temperatures at which the coating breaks apart and emits toxic particles and gases linked to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pet bird deaths and an unknown number of human illnesses each year.
Read MoreThe Environmental Working Group today asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban the use of arsenic-treated wood in outdoor play structures and to order consumer refunds for millions of playsets nationwide, based on a new round of laboratory tests that found high levels of arsenic contamination even on older pressure-treated wooden structures.
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Testimony before the Consumer Product Safety Commission
Jane Houlihan
Vice President for Research
Environmental Working Group
Washington DC
Ford has been the subject of some strong charges by our organization about its veracity with customers and the public about the safety of its Bronco II-Explorer model line.
Read MoreFor decades, they made the world safe for skyrocketing sales of arsenic-soaked wood, and dangerous for the millions of Americans who were exposed to the material, and are still exposed today. But faced with overwhelming scientific evidence that resulted in a regulatory ban and prompted a flood of lawsuits, the American Wood Preservers Institute of Gainesville, FL, has closed its doors for good.
Read MoreMost people are surprised to learn that the government neither conducts nor requires safety testing of chemicals that go into health and beauty products. Today a panel funded and advised by the cosmetic industry determined that cosmetic companies can continue to add reproductive toxins known as phthalates to cosmetics marketed to women of childbearing age.
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In May 2002 a coalition of environmental and public health organizations contracted with a major national laboratory to test 72 name-brand, off-the-shelf beauty products for the presence of phthalates, a large family of industrial chemicals linked to per- manent birth defects in the male reproductive system.
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