A University of Rhode Island scientist who studies chemical pollutants in the marine environment is calling on Congress to pass the Safe Chemicals Act or similar legislation that would reduce the growing number of harmful chemicals in the world’s oceans.
“There are thousands of chemical compounds that are used by industry for all sorts of purposes, and it turns out that they aren’t well regulated at all,” said Rainer Lohmann, a professor at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography.
Lohmann said that when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was started and the first legislation was passed to regulate chemicals in the environment, about 100,000 compounds that were in use at that time were grandfathered. “No one suggests that all of those are bad, but it doesn’t take many of them to create a serious problem,” he said.
An international agreement to ban the worst of these compounds, called the Stockholm Convention, went into effect in 2004, but the United States has not ratified the agreement. The Toxic Substances Control Act was passed by Congress in 1976, but efforts to enforce it have been overturned in court. As a result, Lohmann said that the U.S. has no effective legislation to regulate chemicals.
He advocates for passage of the Safe Chemicals Act, proposed by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to reduce the dangerous toxic chemicals found in everyday consumer products. The bill gives the Environmental Protection Agency the tools to require health and safety testing of toxic chemicals and places the burden on industry to prove that chemicals are safe.
“I’ve been studying ocean basins from the Arctic to Antarctica, and I can find legacy compounds present everywhere I look,” said Lohmann. “Their concentrations are slowly going down while new ones are increasing. It’s an uphill battle, especially when we’re doing little to regulate them.”
The URI scientist decided that the best way he can contribute to solving this hazardous problem is by advocating for regulations and legislation.
“I’ve realized that the reason people like me are needed right now is that we are living in a world full of unsafe chemicals, and changing the status quo would help a lot,” Lohmann said.
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