In a stunning victory for consumer safety and a powerful display of the ability of independent science to spur policy change, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted this week to ban a class of additive, polymeric organhalogen flame retardants (OFRs) that are present in many consumer products. Last week, I was one of many individuals who testified before the CPSC urging the body to grant a petition to ban the class of organohalogen flame retardants from four classes of consumer products: mattresses, children’s products, furniture, and electronic casings.

Of the 31 individuals who testified last week, there were only two individuals who advised the CPSC not to ban OFRs: representatives from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the Information Technology Industry Council. As Commissioner Marietta Robinson pointed out during the hearing, the only comments opposing the ban “represent those with a financial interest in continuing to have these potentially toxic, and some of them definitively, toxic, chemicals in our environment.”  She also noted that the presentations by those opposed to the petition were not transparent and used materials relating to chemicals that were irrelevant to the petition, a drastic contrast to the numerous scientists and scholars whose heavily footnoted statements provided evidence to support the arguments of the well-bounded petition.

Scientific information trumps corporate disinformation

Commissioner Robert Adler, who submitted the motion to grant the petition, compared the chemical industry’s talking points at the hearing on reasons not to ban OFRS to the tobacco industry’s same denial of the health impacts of smoking. His statement read, “if we took the tobacco industry’s word on cigarette safety, we would still be waiting. Similarly, we have waited for years for our friends the chemical industry to provide us with credible evidence that there are safe OFRS. I have little doubt that we will still be waiting for many years, to no avail.” Sadly, he’s probably right.