| Show Groups seek seek ban ban on detergent chemicals Marla Maria Cone I ILos Los Angeles Times Five environmental groups and a labor union Tuesday petitioned the US U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restrict use of chemicals found in many household detergents that have been linked to gender changes in fish and other aquatic life Led by the Sierra Club the groups are se seeking king kinga a ban on and in consumer and industrial detergents and products About million pounds of the chemicals are produced each year in the United States and much of it is flushed into sewers that empty into rivers and other waterways Under the Toxic Substances Control Act enacted 3 31 I years ago I citizens have the authority to petition the EPA to regulate individual substances However it is a power that has been rarely invoked Federal documents show that only eight other petitions have been filed in inthe inthe inthe the past dozen years The EPA denied the requests However the most recent one led to a lawsuit and an agreement by the EPA and Consumer Product Safety Commission to regulate lead in childrens children's jewelry The new petition is the first involving an endocrine- endocrine disrupting chemical a phenomenon discovered by scientists in the early in which man made compounds mimic estrogen or other hormones EPA is in the process of developing methods to screen chemicals for hormonal activity but currently does not consider such effects when it analyzes risks of chemicals and sets environmental standards imitates estrogen and male rainbow to the chemical in laboratories' laboratories become part-male part and part- part female producing female egg proteins according to EPA documents and several scientific studies It is clear that the current unrestricted m manufacture and release of I 1 poses an unreasonable risk to the environment the groups wrote in their petition The human effects are unknown The petition calls for more research into health effects particularly on employees of dry cleaners and laundries Tens of thousands of workers may be exposed to these harmful chemicals each day said Eric Frumin director of the Health and Safety Program at UNITE HERE a labor union that represents laundry workers and one of the groups that filed the petition Companies that manufacture or use the compounds say they have been used in cleaning products for more than 50 years They are among the most extensively studied compounds in commerce today Few compounds have the same degree of available test data or have received the same degree of scientific scrutiny said the Research Council which represents the companies One industry analysis found that concentrations of the compounds exceeded new standards set by the EPA last year in only five of 1255 sampled waterways The industry group describes as a weak estrogen that thatis is far less potent t than an natural estrogens in human sewage But those used in most cleaning products are not estrogenic said Barbara Losey deputy director of the industry's research council compounds are also used in the manufacture of paper paper- textiles paints lube oils tires and other products In addition to the ban for detergents the petition is seeking restrictions on other uses and labels on all products that contain them |
