Day 40: Doing Something About It

I received an email message from the Environmental Working Group yesterday and it almost brought tears to my eyes. (I must be hormonal, because everything seems to be making me cry lately.) The Toxic Chemicals Safety Act is being reviewed by Congress. The EWG asks us all to sign a petition to let Congress know how important this is to us. I don’t usually sign petitions, but believe me, I have signed this one!!!! Within the email, Ken Cook, President of the EWG Action Fund states the following, which is probably what affected me the most:

“This reform is long overdue. In May, the President's Cancer Panel released a new report on exposure to chemicals and the risk of developing cancer. While their findings may be nothing new to you and me -- especially that children are more susceptible than adults to carcinogens and endocrine disruptors -- it is a clear call to Congress to take action now.

"The nearly 300 chemicals that EWG found when testing the umbilical cord blood of 10 Americans -- chemicals like BPA, lead, mercury, fire retardants, perchlorate and PCBs -- are increasingly linked to serious long-term health effects, from childhood cancer and autism to ADHD, learning deficits, infertility and heart disease.”

Go back to that last paragraph. Notice the testing of umbilical cord blood from 10 Americans. I know most people will say, “Ten cords. Big deal.” But notice the significance of this. It might not be so staggering if they had tested thousands of cords and identified a hundred or so chemicals. But they tested TEN cords and identified nearly THREE HUNDRED toxic chemicals. We are poisoning ourselves and our children with every product we use.

@ Yahoo! Video

Additionally, on a similar front, the EWG’s website links to an AOL News article about the Safe Cosmetics Act. Mostly, I now understand that this law will give the FDA more power to regulate the cosmetics industry. I’ve been very hard on the FDA in the last two months. I’ve redefined their initials, I’ve scoffed at any reps of the FDA on GMA, and I’ve grown livid over news articles involving the FDA on matters that, quite frankly, don’t even directly concern me. I’ve been a bit of a bi***.

Ultimately, I want Toxics Reform in all areas of our lives. I want people to know what we are doing to ourselves and our children. I want cosmetics companies and food companies and various industries to wake up and realize that it is far more respectable to care for your customers’ health over your own wealth. I want to be a voice for change, not only in our production, but in our mindsets. I want my daughter to be able to grab an item off of a store shelf and not wonder if it’s going to cause cancer later. I want my family members who don’t care about the product ingredients to live fuller, healthier lives as a result of laws that they may not care to read, but will impact them nonetheless. I want a better world. And I believe it is possible.