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Chemical pollution is causing preventable cancer, says President's Cancer Panel
New report says toxic chemicals are causing Americans 'grievous harm' that could be prevented by better government oversight.
Thu, May 06 2010 at 4:07 PM

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Toxins & Chemicals, Benzene

Photo: tracyyxx/Flickr

At MNN, we’ve told you about formaldehyde in baby shampoo, bisphenol-A (BPA) in canned food, and neurotoxins in veggie burgers — all environmental pollutants allowed in our daily lives due to lax governmental regulations. Lest you thought we were overreacting or exaggerating: Today, the President’s Cancer Panel is pointing to this type of prevalent chemical pollution as a problem that’s causing “grievous harm” to the health of Americans — and urging Obama to take action.
 
In a report being cheered by many environmental health organizations, the President’s Cancer Panel says the chemicals-and-cancer link has been “grossly underestimated” due to lack of research — and that a lot of cancer cases “could have been prevented through appropriate national action.”
 
Indeed, the 240-page report, dubbed Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now (PDF), is strongly worded, beginning with a letter that concludes thusly:
The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures. The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.
Those remarks sound almost exactly like what environmental health organizations such as the Environmental Working Group and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families have been saying for years. Those groups have been pushing to reform the outdated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 for decades. Many are actively behind a new bill called the Safe Chemicals Act (also known as the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act) — though some environmental groups already fear that the act is not strong enough.
 
Hopefully, the new report will scare people into pushing their elected officials to take action. And the panel’s report really is quite scary, with excerpts like this one:
With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are ... understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers.
 
While BPA has received considerable media coverage, the public remains unaware of many common environmental carcinogens such as naturally occurring radon and manufacturing and combustion by-products such as formaldehyde and benzene.
Right now, would-be healthy environmentalists have to conduct their own costly tests and do their own time-consuming research to try to avoid these scary chemicals. Think the government should pass legislation so we don’t have to worry about these pollutants and their potential to give you cancer? Then get involved with strengthening and passing the Safe Chemicals Act.

The opinions expressed by MNN Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of MNN.com. While we have reviewed their content to make sure it complies with our Terms and Conditions, MNN is not responsible for the accuracy of any of their information.

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Comment: 1
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anonymous
Rihana May 07 2010 at 7:13 PM
Making industrial chemicals safer is something we can all get behind. If we want safer chemicals and a safer environment then we must use nonanimal methods of testing. Currently, many toxicity tests are based on experiments in animals and use methods that were developed as long ago as the 1930’s; they and are slow, inaccurate, open to uncertainty and manipulation, and do not adequately protect human health. These tests take anywhere from months to years, and tens of thousands to millions of dollars
.... More
to perform. More importantly, the current testing paradigm has a poor record in predicting effects in humans and an even poorer record in leading to actual regulation of dangerous chemicals. The blueprint for development and implementation for nonanimal testing is the National Research Council report, "Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy in 2007." This report calls for a shift away from the use of animals in toxicity testing. The report also concludes that human cell- and computer-based approaches are the best way to protect human health because they allow us to understand more quickly and accurately the varied effects that chemicals can have on different groups of people. They are also more affordable and more humane. These methods are ideal for assessing the real world scenarios such as mixtures of chemicals, which have proven problematic using animal-based test methods. And, they're the only way we can assess all chemicals on the market.
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