Coalition for Chemical Safety Blog

Guest Post – TSCA and Business

(Guest post from Joe Stafford, Vice President of Correlated Products, Inc. Stay tuned for more guest posts from CCS members throughout the country.)

As a Vice President of a chemical distribution and manufacturing business and—more importantly—a father of three children, I agree with much of what is being talked about among CCS members on this blog and elsewhere.

Reform of our chemical safety standards is long overdue; Americans aren’t being protected equally because of wildly different state laws regulating chemicals—a fact that also presents significant obstacles for many businesses like mine that have customers in different states.

For instance, while we’re based in Indiana, we often ship products across America to places like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Without uniform guidelines, chemical standards in Michigan may become more strict.  Yet other states where we have customers could become more lenient, or sometimes control for different safety factors altogether. It seems that every time I have to fill an order out of state, we need to waste countless hours looking up shipping procedures and regulations for its destination.

That’s why it’s not only critical to enact reform now, but also that policymakers involve industry leaders and scientists in putting together new nationwide standards. We need to prioritize child safety and conduct an extensive review of the research about chemicals on the market today.  Reforms should absolutely advocate for the testing of chemicals in order of their potential human exposure and should evaluate these chemicals based upon their proper use.

But, as others on this blog have pointed out, it is essential that a new chemical safety law provides enough flexibility for businesses to thrive and create jobs. This is especially true since 21^st century innovations and green technologies are likely to be chemical-based.

February 25, 2010 at 9:13 am | Consumers, Jobs, TSCA Reform | 61No commenthttp://blog.coalitionforchemsafety.com/2010/02/guest-post-tsca-and-business/Guest+Post+-+TSCA+and+Business2010-02-25+14%3A13%3A52Joe+Householder You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.