About 84,000 chemicals are used commercially in the United States—of these, some 17,000 are kept secret not only from the public, but also from doctors, state regulators, and emergency responders, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act requires manufacturers to report to the EPA any new chemicals intended for market, but there’s a caveat: they can request that a chemical be kept secret if disclosure ‘could harm their bottom line.’ When the 1976 law was enacted, there were ‘only’ 60,000 chemicals on the market. Since then, the EPA has restricted or banned five and has required testing on another 200. The agency reports that in recent years 95 percent of new–chemical reports from manufacturers include a request for secrecy. Ten of these secret chemicals are used in children’s products.
~Acres U.S.A., March 2010
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