The Crazy Backwardness of Chemical Regulation
The EPA was notorious during the Bush years for a steep decline in prosecutions against big polluters. Under the Obama administration, there’s a new sheriff in town. Her name is Lisa Jackson and she’s a different kind of EPA chief, one who has made big gains in favor of true environmental regulation.
The question is: Will she be able to institute the 180-degree turnaround the EPA needs to get ahead of harmful chemicals?
Let me explain. The current model for approving chemicals for sale is to ask whether there is any evidence that the chemical is harmful. But what if there’s no evidence because there’s never been any testing?
As the approval process stands today, any chemical can make it to market unless there’s already proof that it’s bad for humans or animals. Pesticides and food additives are more closely regulated, requiring testing prior to sale and use.
But what about chemicals we come in contact with every day in cosmetics, lotions, hair products, paint, packaging, cleaning products, clothing (especially fire-retardants required in children’s pajamas), and toys?
Absolutely zero testing required.
Did you know some lipsticks contain lead and other toxic metals? Ever checked the Cosmetic Safety Database to see if the products you’re using are rated highly hazardous? Here’s the list of concerns for the ingredients used in Revlon’s Moisture Frost Lipstick:
Neurotoxicity, Endocrine disruption, Persistence and bioaccumulation, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Enhanced skin absorption, Contamination concerns, Occupational hazards, Biochemical or cellular level changes"
Recent data have proven that it is unlikely that vaccines have caused the rise in autism rates. But what about an accumulation of environmental toxicants in fathers and pregnant mothers? At the very least, it’s difficult to determine causation when so many factors are at play: mothers giving birth later in life may contribute because the eggs are older and may have degraded. But it may also contribute because the mother has lived longer and hence has accumulated additional environmental toxicants. According to Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and chairman of the school’s department of preventive medicine in an entry entitled "What causes autism? Exploring the environmental contribution":
Expanded research is needed into environmental causation of autism. Children today are surrounded by thousands of synthetic chemicals. Two hundred of them are neurotoxic in adult humans, and 1000 more in laboratory models. Yet fewer than 20% of high-volume chemicals have been tested for neurodevelopmental toxicity."
A recent Op-Ed in the NY Times explores the autism-toxin connection in more depth and concludes, "At a time when many Americans still use plastic containers to microwave food, in ways that make toxicologists blanch, we need accelerated research, regulation and consumer protection."
And this is only on the question of unregulated chemicals. What about pesticides?
Though companies must abide by a rigorous approval process, including testing on animal subjects and exploring unintended consequences, pesticides are occasionally removed from market after they’ve been approved. Why? Because complex ecosystems are far more intricate and fragile than any lab test can recreate. Despite careful testing, occasional mistakes are made. Birds may eat pesticide granules not intended for them. Or bees may die after exposure from pesticides on plants.
According to the USDA, Colony Collapse Disorder, the syndrome causing honey bees to leave and never return to their hives, may have "unexpected negative effects" from pesticides as its cause.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 improved the regulation process for the 60,000 substances on the market at the time. Roughly 200,00 new chemicals have been introduced to the market since then. This month the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works began hearings on "Current Science on Public Exposures to Toxic Chemicals" with an ear to passing new legislation sponsored by Frank R. Lautenberg called the Kid Safe Chemicals Act. One important focus of the hearings is PBTs, or Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins.
It would be nice to know the chemicals we, and especially our children, are in contact with every day are proven safe before we’re exposed to them.
For more information:
- Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
- What’s On My Food?
- Health & Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
- Pesticide Action Network
- Sign the petition to help pass the Kid Safe Chemicals Act.
Seven Reasons Why We All Need to Pick up a Pitchfork
Since the financial near-collapse of 2008, we’ve inaugurated a new president, bailed out big banks, and seen Congress fumble an attempt to reform healthcare. Most recently, we’ve seen our Supreme Court rule that corporations have a right to free speech. None of this sounds outrageously shocking. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is a shift in business as usual. Here are seven reasons YOU should be raising Cain with your Congressperson, no matter your party:
1) THE SHEER MAGNITUDE OF THE BAILOUT. It’s fairly well-understood that the financial crisis was very bad. So bad that the government had to enact unprecedented emergency funding of private enterprise followed by a substantial stimulus effort to keep the economy from plummeting into a 1930s-like depression. The cost to the taxpayers? ELEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS. Debt that will take decades to repay.
2) THE DISTORTION OF FREE-MARKET THEORY. What began as a return in the Reagan era to what some people (mostly conservatives) consider to be a bedrock philosophy here in the US: a belief in the righteousness of free-markets, has turned instead into the dark-side of Objectivist Randianism. Investment banks broke zero laws while dragging the entire world’s credit markets into the gravel by profit-raiding under the guise of re-selling debt. Our entire financial system nearly collapsed, and now our economy struggles in a deep recession, while the big bankers and clever investment guys lobby Congress against regulation, because we all know, regulation is un-American and anti-free-market. Regulation is bad, but relying on bailouts from government is okay?!? These guys mean business. From the NY Times:
The nine biggest participants in the derivatives market — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America — created a lobbying organization, the CDS Dealers Consortium, on Nov. 13, a month after five of its members accepted federal bailout money.
To oversee the consortium’s push, lobbying records show, the banks hired a longtime Washington power broker who previously helped fend off derivatives regulation: Edward J. Rosen, a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. A confidential memo Mr. Rosen drafted and shared with the Treasury Department and leaders on Capitol Hill has, politicians and market participants say, played a pivotal role in shaping the debate over derivatives regulation.”
Derivatives, of course, being the most profitable “instrument” in a financial institutions arsenal. And a large cause of the crisis.
3) LOBBYING IS PREVENTING EFFORTS TO REGULATE THE BIGGEST BANKS. The Senate banking committee is hearing testimony about whether or not to adopt policy called “the Volcker Rules” after ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who believes in a return to a separation of investment firms (higher risk) and traditional commercial banking (lower risk, or should be!). President Obama recently came out in support of the Volcker Rule. From Business Week:
The White House defines proprietary trades as those not done for the benefit of customers, a senior administration official said when the Volcker plan was announced. Regulators would have the power to ask banks whether certain trades are related to client business, the official said. If they’re not, the regulators could order firms to exit the positions.”
In other words, if the banks are risking YOUR money for their own private benefit, it’s not allowed. Due to heavy lobbying by the financial industry, the Volcker Rules will likely not pass in the Senate.
4) THOSE BIG, FAT BONUSES. Not only are bankers once again pulling down nauseatingly huge bonuses, they are currently testifying to Congress that regulation will hamper financial innovation. Hello? Didn’t financial “innovation” cause this entire problem? Gerald Corrigan, the Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, testified that he has always believed that banks are “special” and that he could agree to the pre-crisis rule where banks do not enjoy the discount window “so long as Section 13 lending remains a possibility in extreme circumstances.” In other words, as long as they could have a bail-out loans from the Fed if they needed one, lending previously reserved for traditional banks only, not bank holding companies like Goldman Sachs.
One commenter put it this way:
They [Goldman Sachs] were hours, if not minutes, from going the way of the dodo, and yet, 16 months later they are rolling in ill-gotten gains, denying ever having been in trouble, consolidating power, and flipping the bird to anyone who bothers to raise the subject. Chutzpah? Cojones? Sociopathic behavior? It probably doesn’t matter at this point. The predator class seems to hold all the cards, those being: recalcitrance, obfuscation, entitlement… When you have money, power, and are unwilling to “play well with others”, it is quite easy to dig in your heels, threaten to shut off the money supply to incumbent politicians, and sit back and watch your dreams (our nightmares) come true.”
5) WE ALL LOST IN THE RECESSION WHILE THE BANKS SCORED BIG. According to Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF:
As a result of the crisis and various government rescue efforts, the largest 6 banks in our economy now have total assets in excess of 63 percent of GDP. This is a significant increase from even 2006, when the same banks’ assets were around 55 percent of GDP, and a complete transformation compared with the situation in the US just 15 years ago– when the 6 largest banks had combined assets of only around 17 percent of GDP.”
Assets in excess of 63 percent of GDP?!?!?! Meet your new overlords.
6) THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY OWNS CONGRESS. Congress has little incentive to fight against this oligarchy of investment bankers. Because, many congressional representatives are in effect paid to protect business and profit.
From a paper cited in the blog of Mark Thoma, Dept of Economics of the University of Oregon: “By going through individual lobbying reports, we identify all lobbying activities by financial institutions related to the regulation of mortgage lending and securitisation. During the period of the boom from 2000 to 2006, we find 16 pieces of federal legislation aimed at enhancing the regulation of predatory lending practices, none of which ever became law. The amounts spent on lobbying in relation to these laws were substantial and were spent mostly by large financial institutions.” Emphasis added. Because this means that the crisis happened because lobbyists from financial firms influenced legislation AGAINST regulation. The authors further found that institutions that lobbied harder took more risks and fared worse in the crisis than banks that did not invest in lobbying. The authors concluded:
Recent reports show that financial institutions intensified their lobbying efforts in 2009 to fight against an overhaul of derivatives regulation and legislation. Johnson argues that substantial reform will fail unless the political power of the finance industry is weakened.”
7) THE SUPREME COURT JUST SIDED WITH BIG BUSINESS OVER VOTERS. Enter the Supreme Court with the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC). According to a press release from Feb 5, 2010: “The Federal Election Commission today announced that, due to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, it will no longer enforce statutory and regulatory provisions prohibiting corporations and labor unions from making either independent expenditures or electioneering communications.” So there goes that nice idea that maybe we need to limit money’s influence on the political process. Thanks Supreme Court.
So we have two choices as average citizens. Either we make some noise, make some calls to Congress and work to pass some regulation and reforms (like the Fair Elections Now Act), or we sink into apathy and watch the “free market”continue to reward the grotesquely wealthy. I may be a progressive, but this storm of recent events should give even a staunch libertarian the shivers. Our government bailed out massive banks with taxpayer money leaving us with staggering debt. Now those same banks are arguing against regulation so they can do it all again. And the Supreme Court just exacerbated the problem by encouraging the influence of big business in our democratic process. Angry yet?
I Dream of a Comment God
If I Could Write the Code… I’d create a comment-sorting algorithm. The idea is to send the most useful comments to the top so that I don’t have to search so hard to find the sharpest responses in the proverbial haystack. The closest thing we have now is the reader’s choice buttons for ‘recommend’ or ‘don’t recommend’. Usually this doesn’t change the order of the comments, just flags them. I want the juicy, witty, clever, insightful comments to float to the top. Here’s my suggested weighting of comment characteristics:
Forcing Us to Listen Demerit
-15 points: Uses more than one exclamation point attempting to emphasize!! what logic and reasoning can’t sustain. Occasionally overlooked when the exclamation points are contained in a response and to an ignorant poster and are justified subtext for “I’m sorry but you are a blatant dumbass!”
A for Effort Credit
+25 points: Cites legitimate sources; does not include Fox News, Glenn Beck’s show, Rush Limbaugh’s show, blogs with a readership as small as mine, etc.
Times Have Changed Demerit
-10 points: Begins an argument with “when I was a kid…”
Humility Indication Credit
+10 points: Begins an argument with “I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but…” or any IMHO variant.
Cogent Response Credit
+20 points: Begins comment with “I agree.” or “I disagree.”
Anger Demerit
-25 points: Writes in ALL CAPS forcing me to place hands over my ears
Making It Personal Demerit
-15 points: Lectures the author using their first name. Newsflash–I already have a Mom.
Bicker-stopping Smackdown Credit
+50 If you can come up with that rare witty retort, that gem of an inside joke, that sweet vengeance plus humor argument-ender, you win the thread. :)
I love blogs and citizen reporters. The unwashed masses who come out to comment? Not so much. You? You’re great!
Classic Liberalism: A Chance for Political Parties to Unite
In the old days, say 1850 and before, the country operated fairly heavily in the realm of “Classic Liberalism.” Classic liberalism is defined roughly this way:
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly were core commitments of classical liberalism, as was the underlying conception of the proper role of just government as the protection of the liberties of individual citizens. Also central to classical liberalism was a commitment to a system of free markets as the best way to organize economic life.
John Stuart Mill (‘Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign’) and John Locke (all true power of governance derives from the people) laid out the fundamental ideals of Classic Liberalism. Adam Smith is another famous proponents of Classic Liberalism, sometimes called laissez-faire liberalism. But somehow the country drifted away from these core tenets. Some of that drift has been justified correction. Some has been radical ideology worming it’s way into the basic configuration of constitutional intent. Some have radicalized the intent of Classical Liberalism turning it into full-fledged Libertarianism. At it’s best, Classic Liberalism provides core values that both parties can agree on, even if they arere split over the finer points of its implementation.
The Republican Party has become the bastion of theocrats hoping to Christianize the country, and self-serving arses who say any dollar earned is a good dollar despite environmental harm, harm to the greater good, or harm to individuals. It seems to have become the party to protect senior citizens from those greedy young people. At its best, it supports fiscal conservatism, a staunch adherence to the right to individual liberty, and — surprise! — land and environmental conservation.
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by misguided political correctness leading to a “we solve all your problems” brand of immature and fiscally reckless governance. It’s become the party that protects illegal aliens from paying for anything. At its best, it supports a moderate safety net, corrects for legal social injustice (like Jim Crow laws), and protects the environment. Democrats have supported individuals over corporations in the form of unions and labor laws.
Both parties could use a return to some of those core ideals in Classic Liberalism:
- Fiscal Conservatism: NO ONE should spend more than they have, not government, not individuals. How did we become a country that embraces debt as a money-making tool? It’s just wrong. Many Classical Liberals supported the Gold Standard. The gold standard limits the power of governments to inflate prices through excessive issuance of paper currency. If not the gold standard, then at least adherence to hard currency and limits to or complete elimination of fractional reserve banking.
- Separation of Church and State: All people should enjoy the right to worship in the most personal and meaningful way. And this should have NOTHING AT ALL to do with government. See Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason.
- Legislative Restraint: No law should be passed, no individual liberty abridged, without a fundamental justification of its necessity. In other words, seatbelt laws save lives and money, yet constrain individual liberty. Our bar has been lowered way too far allowing laws to abridge individual freedoms in exchange for a nanny state. Once these laws are passed, like taxes, they never come back. Laws should be passed in the protection of freedom and to provide a reasonable framework for constitutional rights to be expressed in contemporary times (e.g. bans on automatic weapons and profit raiding or other modern excesses the founders could not have foreseen).
- Smaller Government: This one’s tricky for all of us these days. All government programs should be lean and efficient, including the military and the safety net of social programs. The military is bloated. Medicare is bloated. Prisons are bloated with non-violent offenders. State and county budgets are trying to cover more and more. As a result, taxes are going only one way: UP! The role of government at every level must be delineated.
- Individual Responsibility: Inherent in the ideas of John Locke in the concept that the individual is the government. Individuals must step up to the civic plate by voting and participating as officeholders. No more “They did it!! They made our taxes go up.” They are we. We must ensure that laws are reasonable, pay taxes for all the benefits we enjoy, and propose tangible solutions when we see problems. A passive citizenry leads to no good. Keep the participation constructive and push for solutions. Work hard to earn stuff. No one owes you anything.
Two immediate issues call for Americans to unite to find suitable solutions: the Banking Crisis, and Climate Change.
Regarding the banking crisis, Classical Liberal economists (Smith, and to some extent Friedman) argued against regulation since they believed that enlightened self-interest would preserve the system and constrain the greed-factor. It hasn’t. There’s been an egregious lack of the “enlightened” portion of that behavior. Classical Liberalism sought to balance the right to entrepreneurial pursuit and the right to protection of the individual over more powerful entities. Post economic meltdown and bail out, the more powerful entities seem to have gained the upper hand.
Where Climate Change is concerned, we are currently in the throws of a philosophical dilemma best summed up in the analogy called the Tragedy of the Commons.
The tragedy of the commons refers to a dilemma described in an influential article by that name written by Garrett Hardin and first published in the journal Science in 1968. The article describes a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest will ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen.
The phrase usually does not refer to the article but to the dilemma itself, typically in talking about a circumstance to which it is thought to apply. Perhaps most who use it are not aware of, nor have read, Hardin’s essay but are looking at conceptually parallel situations.
Central to Hardin’s article is an example, a hypothetical and simplified situation from medieval land tenure in Europe, of herders sharing a common parcel of land (the commons), on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. In Hardin’s example, it is in each herder’s interest to put the next (and succeeding) cows he acquires onto the land, even if the carrying capacity of the commons is exceeded and it is damaged for all as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from an additional cow, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational economic decision, the commons will be destroyed to the detriment of all.
The Constitution intended to protect the common good. It seems that any party for the future needs to heed the lesson of the Tragedy of the Commons and provide a solution that accommodates a reasonably regulated and protected model for shared resources. The Constitution does not cover this explicitly. So far, the Democrats seem to have stepped up to this plate somewhat while the Republicans bury their heads and deny the threat of unrestrained population growth, environmental degradation, and resource depletion (see peak oil).
Neither party has come anywhere near solving our Bankers Gone Wild problem.
But the main point of this post is this: We can agree on most of what made, and still makes, this country great. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Daily Kos all spout hatred and sowing chaos where we should be looking for common ground. We have some big issues to attend to as a country. The sooner we join forces to get back to our core values the sooner we’ll find reasonable solutions.
A Massive Pinnacle of Awesomeness. But First, Tea Partiers.
I have a girlfriend from Georgia who visited back home for a few weeks this summer. After she returned we were discussing the bizarre level of caustic hatred for President Obama, how he hasn’t been in office nearly long enough to earn that kind of emotion. I said, “Do you think it’s really just racism?’ And she said, “Yeah, it’s definitely that.” And I started spouting about the unfairness and the failure to evolve and blah, blah, when she stopped me. “You know, in the South, they believe Obama’s a Muslim. That’s a much bigger problem.” And she was right. Because the anger from white southerners seems to stem from an amorphous yet powerful threat that their way of life is under attack. Their fundamental beliefs are under attack. Though the framers were purposeful in their insistence on a separation of church and state, many still believe that our country was founded for Christians, by Christians. Here’s the video in all it’s uneducated, unenlightened glory…
But since that’s down right scary, you can watch the best mashup I’ve seen in years. Yay! It beats depressing politics for sure!
Pesticides Are Not Our Friends
We’ve recently gone gluten-free in our house leading to a very great improvement in our health. I’ve read anecdotal reports that gluten-allergy is becoming increasingly common, and being the conspiracy-minded individual I am, I started thinking about all of the factors that could lead to increased wheat-sensitivity in the general public. Which, of course, made me wonder what kinds of pesticides are used on crops, not to mention anti-fungal and pesticide treatments for grain held in storage or during transport. And I found out LOTS of nasty chemicals are used to keep grain bug-free, mold-free, and ready for processing into the myriad wheat products we consume. Click here for the Top 50 Pesticides Used on Wheat in California in 2007. What a yummy list.
In fact, after my brief foray into unpronounceable pesticide studies, I have concluded that if you’re not eating organic, it’s no freakin wonder you’re suffering from all kinds of unpleasant effects including cancer, early puberty(not just overseas, but here in the US, too), reactive airways syndrome, asthma, migraines, and chronic sinus problems. One article I found in PubMed (which I cannot read in full since they charge about $600 per article) from the Laboratory of Toxicology, Department of Pharmacological Sciences, University of Milan, stated:
Epidemiological evidence from Western countries indicates that the prevalence of diseases associated with alterations in the immune response, such as asthma, certain autoimmune diseases and cancer, are increasing to such an extent that it cannot be attributed to improved diagnostics alone. There is some concern that this trend could be, at least, partially attributable to new or modified patterns of exposures to chemicals, including pesticides.
In other words, industrialized food production and its accompanying increase in widespread pesticide and chemical use is probably causing all kinds of human maladies that we are not yet aware of. Celiac disease, aka gluten-allergy, is one such autoimmune response that may be caused or exacerbated by these chemicals.
What to do? Buy organic when you can, and make yourself aware of what you’re exposed to when you can’t. Cook your own food, not from a box. Read the ingredient labels. Are there additives in there that you can’t pronounce? Whip out that Blackberry or iPhone and look it up before you eat it. To get educated in general, here are four cool resources:
- First, a book called In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, which you’ve probably heard of. (Also worth reading, the Omnivore’s Dilemma.) Not so much about pesticides per se, and more about the contortion of original food into industrialized, marketable, processed uh, crap. That we eat.
- Second, a new website called What’s On My Food? gives consumers some idea of commonly found pesticide residues found on non-organic produce. This site is published by the very good-looking and awesome Pesticide Action Network, which I don’t know much about, but will soon.
- Third, another website called the Ethicurian educates on industrial food politics and practices, encouraging consumers to “chew the right thing.”
- And yet a fourth website, Hungry for Change, comes from the film Food Inc. and also seeks to educate the public about food production issues.
It’s taken an investment in time and energy to figure out what’s good food, and to really know what we’re eating. So completely worth it. Health is too important to let marketing decide for you.
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