San Francisco -- It sometimes seems to take forever, but when the Sierra Club keeps at it, we can make progress against even the stubborn resistance of government and business to take your safety seriously. After years of denial, the EPA finally acceded to pressure from the Sierra Club, twenty-four other citizen organizations and 5,000 citizens and agreed to begin a four-part investigation into the toxic impacts of formaldehyde in our homes, schools, and offices. This is the agency's long-delayed response to the scandal revealed when the Sierra Club's testing programs revealed that a huge percentage of the trailers being used by the federal government to house victims of hurricane Katrina were poisoning them.
In another break for American health, a state judge ordered California to explain why it should not list PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) to the list of chemicals regulated by California's Proposition 65. PFOA is a chemical produced by DuPont and associated with Teflon and related anti-stick products. The Sierra Club, the United Steelworkers, and other organizations had repeatedly asked California to list PFOA under Prop 65 after the EPA indicated that it was a likely human carcinogen. But California stonewalled, refusing to act on PFOA or other, similar chemicals.
PFOA is a pervasive, synthetically produced compound used in consumer and industrial products, including many non-stick surfaces found on cookware and stain-resistant, durable, or all-weather clothing. It is prevalent in industries such as aerospace, automotive, building and construction, chemical processing, and electrical. The use of PFOAs in popular consumer and industrial products has led to near universal exposure to the chemical.
It's almost certainly in your body. And right now you have no way of knowing when you are inadvertently exposing yourself to more of it. But this ruling almost certainly means that, at least in California, manufacturers will have to warn you. And in past cases, their response has been -- surprise -- not to warn you, but to get the toxic chemical out of their products. It's shameful that a company like DuPont won't tell you on its own; it's shameful that the State of California will ignore the law to shield DuPont from having to tell you. Just as it was shameful that the EPA wouldn't take action on formaldehyde until we intervened.
But you are a little bit safer today, thanks to the power of citizen pressure. Democracy works -- you just have to work at it.