{"id":19572,"date":"2013-12-06T03:03:18","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T03:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leedpoints.com\/?guid=0a06527c27bb9f151d2c2baeeddbc279"},"modified":"2013-12-06T03:03:18","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T03:03:18","slug":"the-problem-with-chemical-flame-retardants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/the-problem-with-chemical-flame-retardants\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with chemical flame retardants"},"content":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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If you worked from the assumption that a majority of the more than 80,000 chemicals released by industry into the world have been tested for human and environmental safety, you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.<\/p>\n

Take as a prime example flame retardants. They’re everywhere. In our furniture. Our homes. Our bodies. Yet as pointed out by the searing new documentary “Toxic Hot Seat<\/a>,”  flame retardants as currently used do little to stop fires. Their most noteworthy contribution, it appears, is earning a lot of money for chemical companies Chemtura (NYSE: CHMT<\/a>), Albemarle (NYSE: ALB<\/a>) and Israeli Chemicals Ltd., which together produce billions – yes, billions<\/em> – of pounds of flame retardant chemicals annually. All the while, people are getting sick.<\/p>\n

Reviewed this week by Sustainable Industries<\/em>, “Toxic Hot Seat” takes an in-depth look at a nexus of money, politics and power – and a group of firefighters, mothers, journalists, scientists, politicians and activists as they fight to expose a shadowy campaign of deception that is leaving a toxic legacy. The exposé debuted November 25 and is currently available only on HBO.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What might best be described as the “Blue Vinyl<\/a>” of this decade, “Toxic Hot Seat” tells an intricate story of how the chemical companies that produce flame retardants spend millions of dollars on lobbyists, publicists and lawyers to spin for its business interests. The documentary also details how Big Tobacco – yes, your good friends at Big Tobacco – had a hand in convincing fire-safety officials to back a standard that, in effect, requires all furniture to be filled with toxic flame retardants. It was a nice shift in emphasis for cigarette makers, which produce a product known to cause a lot of fires.<\/p>\n

Known as California Technical Bulletin 117<\/a>, the 1975 law was meant to reduce the escalating death rates from house fires caused by cigarettes. It mandated that all fabrics sold in California contain flame retardants. To streamline operations, furniture makers opted to use the fire-retardant chemicals in all polyurethane foam-based furniture sold in the United States, not just items for sale in California.<\/p>\n

[pagebreak]Directed and produced by Kirby Walker, “Toxic Hot Seat” shows how the American Chemistry Council<\/a> and a handful of large chemical companies misrepresented safety data to alarm legislators and the public about the risk of removing flame retardants from homes. Two major studies the industry has for years cited as evidence of the safety and efficacy of flame retardants are shown to be either obscure and obsolete – or wilfully misrepresented.<\/p>\n

“Toxic Hot Seat” also exposes Citizens for Fire Safety, which billed itself as a wholesome and broad coalition of consumers fighting for fire safety, as a front solely backed by the major flame retardant manufacturers. The group’s web site<\/a>, which has since come clean about who’s behind it, no longer shows photos of smiling children – only the following message as a placeholder:<\/p>\n

“The three founding members of Citizens for Fire Safety Institute: Albemarle Corporation, Chemtura Corporation and ICL Industrial Products have elected to conduct all advocacy and communications efforts through the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) North American Flame Retardant Alliance<\/a> (NAFRA). … 

Working through ACC’s North American Flame Retardant Alliance, we will focus on educating policymakers and stakeholders about the contributions of flame retardants to fire safety, and the science that supports flame retardant chemistries as an important tool to protect lives and property by reducing the flammability of the products around us. NAFRA will also support new scientific research on the safe and effective use of flame retardants.”  <\/p>\n

The documentary is set against the backdrop of the superb 2012 Chicago Tribune<\/em> series “Playing with Fire<\/a>,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. When you see how public policy is corrupted to allow the chemical industry free reign to profit from experiments with human and environmental health, you may also realize how increasingly rare and precious the Trib<\/em>’s work is. We are no doubt losing out with today’s decline in the investigative watchdogs of the Fourth Estate.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the backlash against flame retardants has been led by other brave souls with less amplified megaphones who are profiled in “Toxic Hot Seat”:<\/p>\n