Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

44 February 2013 Unacceptable Levels Continued from previous page The Quest to Learn Why? Ed Brown was a sports journal- ist. He had always dreamed of one day becoming a filmmaker, but he never really thought about doing a documentary film--that is, until his wife had her second unexplained mis- carriage. As a journalist, Ed decided to start looking for some possible answers. Could something in their family's environment be a causal agent? So began his information quest, and that trail led to a significant amount of background research, numer- ous interviews, and terabytes of recorded video footage. After several years of work, the result of Ed Brown's ques- tions was the award-winning documentary, "Unacceptable Levels." The film explores possible links between what has become our commonplace exposure to a staggering number of chemi- cals. They're Safe, Aren't They? The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the United States law passed by the United States Congress in 1976, regu- lates the introduction of new or already existing chemicals. There are a lot of chemicals, in fact over 80,000. At the time TSCA was enacted, most of the already existing chemicals were grand-fathered in and included on the inventory list. How many chemicals? Over 60,000 made the inventory on the basis of already being in use. Few of these inventoried chemicals have undergone any extensive safety testing. Most have never been tested in combination with other chemi- cals, which would be more re- flective of the real-world usage and consumer exposures. The regulatory premise in the U.S. has been based on a belief that most of these chemicals are safe, in contrast to the European Union's Reg- istration, Evaluation and Autho- rization of Chemicals (REACh) legislation. In the 30+ years since TSCA, the EPA has only regulated less than 10 of the 80,000+ chemicals in the

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