Environmental Health News

Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 289 (Chan), a bill that would ensure the availability of chemical detection methods for programs such as the biomonitoring program also signed into law today. 

AB 289 would give the state the tools it needs to detect potentially-harmful chemicals that currently go undetected in our bodies and the environment.  Specifically, it authorizes state agencies to require chemical manufacturers to turn over the test methods for detecting their chemicals in air, water, soil, and the human body.  Such methods can be used in the state’s biomonitoring program, which will be established following today’s signing of SB 1379 (Perata and Ortiz). 

In addition to the new biomonitoring law, California is the first state in the country to enact a law giving the state the authority to require companies to provide their detection methods.

“It’s impossible to know whether chemicals are building up in our bodies and the environment if we don’t even have the tools to detect them.  With this legislation, California regulators will have information at their finger tips to more quickly determine if there is a public health or environmental crisis looming,” said Rachel Gibson, Environmental Health Staff Attorney for Environment California—a co-sponsor of AB 289.  “We commend the governor for recognizing the importance of this legislation,” Gibson said.

Laboratories within the California Environmental Protection Agency must use taxpayer money to develop detection methods for finding chemicals in the air, water, soil, and human body.  The cost of developing these methods can run up to one million dollars for a single chemical, placing a significant financial burden on Cal-EPA and limiting the number of methods that can be developed in a given year.  This legislation will save the state millions of dollars by shifting the financial costs from Cal-EPA to the industries producing the chemicals.  It also enables state regulators to increase the number of detection methods available to them in a timely manner. 

In 2003, Assembly Member Chan authored AB 302, which prohibits the manufacture, use, and distribution of two toxic flame retardants—or PBDEs—of concern to human health.  “By the time the state had developed the detection methods to test for flame retardants, thousands of women had built up levels of toxic flame retardants in their breast milk that could be dangerous to a developing child,” said Gibson.  “The case of toxic flame retardants provides a perfect example of what is wrong with the current system.  If industry wants to release chemicals into our environment, they should at a minimum provide the methods for detecting these chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and in our bodies so they can be tracked more closely.”