Both the US Senate and House of Representatives voted to pass a bill that provides for the reauthorization of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The bill includes many safety protections, including all-terrain vehicle standards, whistleblower protection for employees of manufacturers and distributors, and a ban on phthalates in children’s toys. The bill is now being sent to the White House for the President’s approval, which he is expected to sign.

A resolution has been introduced into US Congress asking the US to ban the export of environmentally damaging electronic waste to developing countries. If successful, it would bring the US in line with countries that ratified the Basel Convention, an agreement between 170 countries to regulate the international shipment of toxic waste. Although the US has signed the Convention, it failed to ratify it, and still has many agreements with countries that receive its electrical waste. According to the Resolution, 50% to 80% of electronic waste collected for reuse or recycling in the US is exported to countries such as China, India, Ghana, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

An Assembly leader is pledging a down-to-the-wire fight for legislation that would require the state to adopt worker exposure standards for all known cancer-causing chemicals. Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Sally Lieber says the measure is needed because a state board responsible for setting industrial safety standards has been guilty of "a reprehensible level of inaction" regarding California workers who are exposed to dangerous chemicals on the job.

Responding to growing consumer anxiety, California lawmakers are considering enacting what could be the first statewide restrictions on a chemical found in plastic baby bottles and infant formula cans. The bill would require that all products or food containers designed for children 3 years and younger contain only trace amounts of the chemical, bisphenol A. There is little dispute that bisphenol A can disrupt the hormonal system, but scientists differ on whether the very low amounts found in food and beverage containers can be harmful.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced recently that he had settled lawsuits against leading makers of potato chips and french fries over levels of a cancer-causing chemical in their products. At first, this looked like a laudable example of the public and private sectors working together. In reality, it was an illustration of how companies all too often have to be dragged screaming and kicking to do the right thing. The lawsuit centered on a chemical called acrylamide, which has been listed as a cancer-causing substance in California since 1990. Acrylamide is used industrially for sewage treatment.

A lobbying group on the payroll of the chemical industry is launching a public relations blitz aimed at derailing California's proposal to ban Bisphenol A in products designed for babies and children under the age of 3. California is among about 12 states to consider banning Bisphenol A, since the federal government has been slow to act on a growing list of concerns. Independent research has uncovered worrying qualities to Bisphenol A; it mimics hormones, could affect normal development and reproduction and would have its most dramatic effects on young bodies undergoing rapid development. The list of potential effects is long and damning: breast and prostate cancer, obesity, diabetes, brain and liver damage.

Related Article: "Industry fights effort to ban chemical in baby products" (OC Register)

This author states that "the use of biopolymers for packaging is a step in the right direction. Further development is definitely in order. By no means will biopolymers ever be the solution to a more sustainable future. But once the R&D crowd has cleared a few hurdles, I think biopolymers will claim a rightful place in the packaging mix. One of the reasons that biopolymers have made such strides in recent years is because the cost of oil-based polymers has risen so dramatically compared to the cost of the crops from which biopolymers are derived. Will a spike in the cost of corn, a key building block of the biopolymers business, put a damper on the growth of biopolymers? It seems unlikely when there’s talk of gas costing $7/gal. But it certainly bears watching."

A bill which would have placed a 25-cent tax on every plastic bag provided by a grocery store in California failed to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council (PBA) and many statewide consumer groups opposed AB 2058 because it would have imposed a $4.75 billion tax on grocery shoppers.  The proposed twenty-five-cent-per-bag tax could have added upwards of $400 a year to the average family’s grocery bill. Many of California’s families are already struggling with rapidly rising food and energy prices, and this tax would have inevitably hurt the people who can least afford it, especially those shoppers who walk or take public transportation to the grocery store.