Archive for July 29th, 2008

Bush Vs. Children

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

On Monday Congress decided to ban phthalates from children’s toys and other products. Why? Well, phthalates have been linked to health issues including asthma, allergies, reduced sperm count and genital abnormalities in boys. This legislation would remove three types of phthalates from consumer products permanently and another three types pending further study. On top of that this legislation would ban lead from children’s toys and open up a consumer database of complaints or accident reports for goods.
Toys R Us/Babies R Us and Walmart have stated that they would stop selling toys containing phthalates starting January 2009. I want you to ask yourself something: How bad does a chemical have to be for Walmart to voluntarily ban them? This is Walmart for fucks sake.

As you may have guessed by the title of the post the Bush administration, voiced by spokesman Tony Fratto, responded by saying Bush opposes the ban.
Nice.

Exxon Mobil, who manufactures a large chuck of this shit, responded by claiming that this legislation would put children at even greater risk because manufacturers would have to replace the phthalates with something that could be worse.

Read that last bit again. That right there explains exactly what it wrong with our system. We don’t require chemical additives to be fully tested to see if there are any health concerns before releasing them into the wild. In Europe the safety of a chemical must be proven before it is allowed on the market, here it must be proven unsafe before it is removed.