M8.4:Chemical Policy Reform

The Louisville Charter for Safer Chemical have outlined an ideal policy that we should all adopt in any new chemical policies. I really like the idea of phasing out any toxic chemicals, to take early action when there evidence of harm,  and disclosing information to the public. I did not know of any holes in our national chemical policy, so I did a search and found that there are some weakness to our chemical policies. There is lead acetate in hair dye that have been linked to neurotoxin, which is banned in Canada and Europe, but it is still being used in the US. Hair dye is regulated by the FDA, and the FDA won't look into the problem or consider banning it until they have reliable facts and information, which may take them years to investigate, and the public would not even hear about it in the mean time. The safety of products being sold should be the responsibility of the companies that manufacture it but our law does not require any specific tests to be conducted before new products are introduced to the market or if they did conduct tests, they are not obligated to publish their data. I think that is very irresponsible because they should publish their data and if they do see that there may be possibility of harm to the public then it should not be in the market in the first place. I think there should be a push for new policies that follow the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemical.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 19, 2018 at 6:48 PM

    Hi Feng,

    I agree with you with phasing out chemicals. I think this would be a great idea as well. I had no idea that hair dye has a toxic chemical that is banned from other countries. The US needs to do a better job in their regulation and the FDA needs to raise their standards.

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  2. UnknownMarch 19, 2018 at 7:01 PM

    It is funny that you should mention that there should be more regulation about personal care products like that. The non profit that I am doing my fieldwork at has been working towards eliminating the toxic chemicals in personal care products. I believe right now they are working on scheduling meetings with a couple different California senators to ban certain toxic chemicals. From what I understand, it is a long road in order to ban those products, but we need to start somewhere in order to get these chemicals eliminated.

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