Book Review: Exposed by Mark Schapiro

    Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a journalist writing about the petrochemical industry, I was really intrigued one day when I turned on NPR and heard an interview with Mark Schapiro, the author of Exposed—a concise, informative look at how toxic substances permeate our modern lifestyle and how the United States is taking a back seat to the European Union in controlling peoples' exposure to such chemicals. It's informative and depressing at the same time, but definitely worth a read.                

    One of the central points of the book is that Europeans and Americans define risk differently—at least chemically speaking. The Europeans test a particular chemical for toxicity, and, based on scientific evidence, determine that the chemical poses enough potential harm to warrant removing it from the marketplace. Americans conduct the same scientific tests, get the same results, but come to a different conclusion. The American standards for removing a chemical from the eye-shadow you wear or the soft toy your toddler plays with (and inevitably chews) are quite a bit tougher. It's innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt for American chemical producers. That may work well in the criminal justice system, but this book makes you very dubious about its success in keeping Americans safe from toxic chemicals.

               

  PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a case in point. Many products in our home environment are made from polyvinyl chloride plastic and many of those products are treated with PVC softeners called phthalates. Phthalates , for instance, are what give a new car its new-car smell. That smell dissipates as the car ages, the dashboard hardens and the phthalates enter the air or your skin. But they can also enter your kids' bloodstream, and that's where real trouble begins.

               

Dangerous Ducky

  Those same phthalates in your car are also what make that rubber ducky floating in your 2-year-old's bathtub easy to squeeze and irresistible to chew. They are also in things like shower curtains, bathmats and shampoo bottles. One of the most widely used is called di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate or DEHP. The trouble with DEHP, as Schapiro points out, is that ingesting it (by sucking on a rubber ducky, for instance) can interfere with the production of LH, a hormone that plays a big part in the production of testosterone. This, in turn, can seriously affect male sexual development. Some scientists think that it already has affected male fertility. That's scary stuff.

    Manufacturers of electronic equipment have been forced to be innovative and eliminate those six chemicals from prodEurope has been far more pro-active in the past eight years than the US in addressing the potential dangers of chemicals in consumer products. The birth of the European Union encouraged a more cohesive approach to chemical exposure. Two European directives, RoHS ( restriction of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment) and REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) were adopted.
  
   RoHS banned six substances—including mercury and lead—from all electrically powered devices. The reason being that when people like you and I dispose of old cell-phones, computers, DVD players and various other electronics we use in our everyday lives, those toxic substances accumulate in landfills and leech into the soil and groundwater. Hundreds of studies suggest that these chemicals widely used in electronic devices still sold in the US, but not in Europe, have potent negative health effects (increased incidence of cancer being just one).ucts intended for the European market.

                Chemical Reach                

    REACH, established in 2003, gathers toxicity data on more that 60,000 chemicals sold in Europe either in their raw form or in finished consumer products. Those chemicals have to be registered, evaluated and authorized before being permitted to remain on the market. Substances seen as a particular threat to human health or the environment require specific approval and conditions for use. Europe is trying to bring countries like China, India and Brazil into compliance with REACH—because they are countries where much of its manufacturing is outsourced. In other words, the EU is setting the parameters for world chemical commerce—not the US.

    The only parallel regulation to REACH in the US is TSCA (The Toxic Substances Control Act), passed by Congress in 1976. TSCA, which became law in 1977, required all chemicals developed in the US from that point on be subject to toxicity testing before entering the market. It exempted some 62,000 chemicals (including things like PVC and phthalates) from any testing or review! The US Environmental Protection Agency today says that 95 percent of all chemicals have never undergone any testing for toxicity or environmental impact.

   The US has dropped the ball when it comes to environmental regulation. Despite US opposition, many environmental initiatives have been established for the twenty-first century, with Europe leading the way, and countries like Japan following Europe's lead. Reading Exposed leaves a person feeling—well, exposed--not only in your own home, but in restaurants, office cafeterias and lots of other places. Not a good feeling at all!--Janet Link

    Exposed—The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power                 Chelsea Green Publishing Company, White River Junction, VT.