Chemical Toxicity in our products

This week's assignment for my Environmental Science class was to read an article entitled “Regulating toxic chemicals: Do we know enough about chemical risks?” and reflect upon its contents. This article presents a fairly complete overview of the issues that surround the topic of chemical usage in commercial products. One of the main points that it makes is the manner that chemicals are regulated. It states that the EPA and FDA are the government organizations that are in charge of chemical regulation. The problem that arises is the manner that they are authorized to test and regulate chemicals. In the United States it is the responsibility of the agencies, not the businesses, to test the chemicals, a pricey thing to do. The agencies must prove that a chemical is bad for the environment or human health before it will be banned. The United Nations have adopted a different approach to the issue. REACH (registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals) uses a precautionary principle requiring that chemicals must be tested and proven to be safe to the public and environment. To me, the precautionary approach makes much  more sense. Some problems have come up with banning chemicals though, such as the use of DDT, an insecticide. The EPA banned it for its negative effects on the environment but the World Health Organization endorsed DDT for its help in controlling mosquitoes and the spreading of malaria. Chemical companies also have a large stake in how chemicals are regulated and are vocal about it. Another issue was the use of nanomaterial, chemicals, many of which are considered safe at larger sizes, that are not tested in their smaller size. How these nanochemicals react with the human body and the environment have largely been untested.

I found the debate about DDT to be particularly interesting so I chose this topic to finish the second half of this assignment, to look up other articles that relate to one of the topics talked about in this article. This is one source I found:

http://www.edf.org/about/our-mission-and-history

It was very interesting to me the affect that DDT has on the environment. One major problem it causes is the thinning of egg shells causing harm to many bird populations such as the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon. I had known about this problem before because of my brief stint with falconry. I had seen wild peregrine falcons and knew that because of some pesticide they were nearly extinct. I now know that was DDT and had it not been banned and the birds rehabilitated they would be gone now. This article also claims that the use of DDT for mosquito control was in decline because of growing resistance to the insecticide.

This next article is only slightly in favor of DDT:

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/517

This article seems to show the desperation that malaria evokes. It acknowledges that DDT is extremely harmful, but is to date one of the most effective means to control the disease. Controlling mosquito populations is the only reason that DDT is still in use. DDT is still used in 19 countries, mostly Africa. Despite its ban in many countries it is still one of the most prevalent chemicals found in breastmilk because it does not break down easily and is still very present in the environment.