Biomonitoring. Safe Cosmetics. Toxic Toys. All of these measures have been important in either protecting the public from toxic exposures or by giving us more information about what chemicals are in our bodies. Unfortunately, while these and other legislative measures may have fixed one problem, we know that the entire chemicals management system in this country and in California is broken and in need of massive overhaul.

Early last year, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control also acknowledged that looking at either chemicals or product categories one at a time wasn’t going to adequately address the toxic crisis plaguing California.

As a result, the state embarked on the creation of the California Green Chemistry Initiative.

The Breast Cancer Fund and its coalition partners in CHANGE (Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy) were active participants during the initiative’s stakeholder meetings and public workshops. The state received more than 800 different options from advocates and industry on how best to regulate chemicals.

After a year of evaluating these options and seriously considering the ones put forward by the Breast Cancer Fund and CHANGE to become the framework for future toxics decisions in California, the California Environmental Protection Agency released the Final Recommendations Report on December 16, 2008. Two of the recommendations include the consumer product safety laws passed in September that were championed by the Breast Cancer Fund. These laws give the stale the authority to monitor the use of chemicals in everyday products and create a public online database of information on these chemicals.

The Breast Cancer Fund will remain engaged in the implementation of these recommendations to ensure that they are translated into strong legislation and mandatory administrative actions.

December 16, 2008 press release »
Green Chemistry Initiative final report » (opens PDF in new window)
Learn more about the Green Chemistry Initiative »