Protecting the Public’s Health from Toxic Bisphenol-A (BPA) in Thermal Receipt Paper: SB 210
SB 210 does two things. It proposes to ban BPA from thermal paper receipts like those found in ATM machines, gas pumps and cash registers with a safer alternative. It also moves us toward a sustainable framework for listing chemicals of high concern such as carcinogens, developmental toxins and reproductive toxins.
Background: BPA, a known endocrine disruptor, is linked to several diseases including breast and prostate cancer, reproductive disorders, insulin resistance, diabetes and learning/behavioral disorders. Recent reports show that BPA is present in many thermal paper receipts. BPA in thermal paper is unbound and readily transmits to hands and money. Our exposure to BPA is much higher than previously imagined and is of particular concern for workers in check-out lines. This is one more example of why we need a framework to prioritize the most toxic chemicals and, with federal reform stalled, states like Connecticut are taking the lead.
Preventing Mercury Contamination from Old Thermostats: SB 205
There are over 1,700,000 mercury thermostats in Connecticut homes; each contains between three to five grams of mercury. That means that Connecticut mercury thermostats contain over 11,500 pounds of mercury. A single gram of mercury is enough to contaminate a 20 acre lake.
Mercury thermostats were built to last about 30 years. As they reach their end-of-use, only about 5% are properly recycled; the others end up in landfills where they are often burned, releasing mercury into the atmosphere.
SB 205 would require manufacturers to finance a collection and recycling program paying a $5 incentive for each mercury thermostat returned. Similar laws in Maine and Vermont increased recycling by a factor of 10. Connecticut needs to step up and require manufacturers to dramatically increase collection rates.
On March 22nd, substitute language was inserted into SB 205 rendering it ineffective. We are now fighting to reinstate the original language.
Bank of America - Profiting without pitching in:
It’s time for Bank of America and all of the big banks in CT to pay their fair share. When big banks profit without pitching in, it hurts every tax payer in Connecticut. Although it holds more than $1 of every $5 of deposits in Connecticut, Bank of America pays virtually no taxes to support our local economy, while their foreclosures drive down home values and cost our communities millions of dollars. Bank of America is stifling job creation by refusing to lend to small business. CCAG will continue to pressure the bank to ease up on foreclosures, increase lending to job-creating small businesses, and increase efforts to work with homeowners who need mortgage modifications.
Equality is fundamental to representative democracy. Everyone's vote should be equal when electing the President. Our current Electoral College system, grounded in state law, leads presidential candidates to concentrate their resources on voters in a handful of swing states, relegating the majority of the country to spectator status. CCAG is advocating for direct election of the President. The National Popular Vote plan ensures that every vote for President is equally valued no matter where it is cast.
Last year, this bill passed the house but was never taken up by the Senate. CCAG is fighting to see that HB 6163 gets passed in both chambers and is signed by the Governor this year. Passing this legislation would add Connecticut's voice to the national dialogue and give every voter an equal chance to let their voices be heard.
No Excuse Absentee Ballot/Early Voting: SB 941
In Connecticut, a registered voter seeking an absentee ballot must provide an excuse as to why they cannot vote at their polling station on Election Day. Connecticut should join the other 30 states that have eliminated this unnecessary barrier to voting. For any host of reasons (transportation, inclement weather, illness or work schedule) it may be difficult for voters to reach the polls on Election Day. This measure would help ensure a greater participation in our elections.
CCAG supports a strong, progressive energy policy for Connecticut
Create an Energy Department and disband the DPUC. The current DPUC Commissioners have consistently sided with power producers and Wall Street speculators over consumers and small businesses. The current DPUC structure needs to be dissolved. We need a clear, coherent energy policy in Connecticut with an emphasis on conservation and renewables. Administration actions need to match its rhetoric. For instance, dedicated funds for conservation and renewables have been the first casualties during budget shortfalls. This raiding must stop.
Hire a Procurement Manager within the Energy Department or create a Public Power Authority to lower energy rates in Connecticut by 15% to 20%. A study in 2009 concluded that a Public Power Authority in Connecticut could lower electric rates by 15% to 20% over several years. Illinois lowered their rates by 9% in 2009, the first year of their Public Power Authority. We need to end the closed auction procurement system Connecticut currently has (the same one California had that Enron manipulated) and replace it with one that benefits consumers.
End so-called “Retail Competition”. The legislature had good intentions when it decided to spur competition among electric suppliers. The system has clearly failed. Connecticut ratepayers have subsidized fake competition to the tune of over $150 million dollars over the last 10 years. It’s time to end this deceptive charade and lower everybody’s electric rates, not prop up companies who couldn’t survive if we weren’t paying higher electric rates.
Reducing Energy Costs for Consumers: HB 5699 and HB 6026
CT needs to pass one of these two bills as we work to lower energy prices
HB 5699 Seeks to provide relief to electricity consumers. CCAG believes that the Federal pricing rules create an inequity for consumers. A windfall profits rebate would restore some balance as we work to lower energy prices in Connecticut. The windfall profits rebate would be assessed only on profits above a 20% rate of return-on-equity. Corporations would keep 100% of their profits under the 20% rate of return, and 50% of their profits over the 20% rate of return.
HB 6026 is another proposal that would reduce costs to consumers by implementing a straight tax on output. A one cent per kilowatt-hour tax on coal, and a 2 cent tax on nuclear generation would capture almost $330 million in revenue. There is way too much ratepayer money going to fatten corporations’ bottom lines at our expense. These generation facilities have been paid for many times over; we should not be paying for them over and over and over.
SustiNet + Federal Health Care Reform = A Win-Win for Connecticut
Connecticut’s landmark 2009 health care law, SustiNet, uniquely prepares our state to benefit from the new federal Patient Protection Affordable Care Act. SustiNet put Connecticut at the front of the line for new federal dollars that will enhance state-based health care initiatives while helping to boost the economy. Connecticut and federal laws will work together to make good, affordable health care choices available to individuals, families and small businesses. You can track the Board’s progress at: www.ct.gov\sustinet
State Prescription Drug Purchasing: HB 6322
The state is the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in Connecticut. Through an initiative with the Department of Social Services, HB 6322 will allow the Office of the State Comptroller to procure prescription drugs for the Connecticut Medical Assistance Programs. This would strengthen the state's purchasing power, yielding at least $66.5 million in savings (according to State Comptroller Kevin Lembo), and would not change the way that patients and consumers access their medications.
The Establishment of the Connecticut Healthcare Partnership: HB 6308
CCAG is supporting HB 6308. This bill would allow cities and towns, non-profits and small businesses (50 employees or less) to tap into the State Employee healthcare system. This partnership would lower administrative costs and take advantage of the bargaining power of the State plan’s 200,000 members.
Promising to help Connecticut move beyond the one-chemical-at-a-time approach to toxic chemical regulation, House Bill 5126 establishes the mission and the Board of Directors of a Chemical Innovations Institute (CII) for research and education in green technologies. The program will be housed at UConn Health Center but will operate largely on outside funding. It will protect the environment and the citizens of CT while also constituting an economic development opportunity for the state.
Just plug in your address and we'll set you up with a tailored e-mail that you can send off in just a couple of minutes. Your legislators will appreciate being thanked for their work if they are one of our strong supporters, and if we don't yet know where your legislators stand, your e-mail can help us find out.
The chemical industry and their allies are holding dozens of meetings with legislators this week. In order to win we need to generate hundreds of e-mails from concerned citizens around the state. People like you will make the difference!
Tired of wondering how much toxic BPA you ate for dinner? Frustrated that the federal government has failed to take the most basic step of phasing out this hazardous, unnecessary substance from food and beverage containers?
Please join parents, health professionals, legislators, and concerned citizens from around the state as we stand up in support of Connecticut’s House Bill 6572 to phase out BPA from products that come in contact with our food. This is your chance to stand with a 35’ giant baby bottle, swap your toxic baby bottle for a complimentary BPA-free bottle, and talk with your legislators along with other members of the Coalition for a Safe & Healthy Connecticut. Bring a child, bring a sign, bring a friend, or just bring yourself!
EVENT DETAILS:
Who: Parents, health professionals, legislators, and concerned citizens from around the state What: Rally in support of legislation to phase out BPA When: Tuesday April 14th, 10:30am-11:30am Where: Legislative Office Building's Minuteman Park, 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford CT (Rain location TBD)
Minuteman Park is the grassy area in front of Legislative Office Building and the State Armory, 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford CT.
Visitor parking is typically available in the Legislative Office Building parking garage. Arrive early to allow time for parking.
A federal law outlawing the sale of children’s products with toxic chemicals took effect last week, but largely blunted by exemptions given to stores panicking over the law’s new expenses.
A provision of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, passed in August, prohibits the manufacture and sale of children’s products with lead, a well-known neurotoxin, and phthalates, plastic-softening chemicals linked to breast cancer, infertility and other health problems. Manufacturers and retailers were given until Feb. 10 to comply with the standards.
But shelves in thrift stores, libraries and consignment stores across the country are filled with toys, books and clothing manufactured before the standards were passed.
As the date for implementing the laws drew near, misinformation and questions swirled on the Internet. Confusion was largely focused on the cost of testing and who is responsible for verifying toys comply with the 600 part per million standard set for the first year of the law. Ultimately, products will need to meet a maximum of 100 ppm by 2012.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a toxic chemical commonly used in plastic bottles, in spite of its links to several serious health problems like heart disease and liver failure. That alone is reason enough to support banning its use in products. Manufacturers who use BPA in their products have been able to downplay the risks by citing research indicating that levels of BPA declined quickly.
[Environmental health scientist Richard] Stahlhut says that it appears that the amount of BPA in the body drops relatively rapidly from four to nine hours after exposure, but then levels out. "After the nine hours or so," he says, "it stops doing what it's supposed to and the decline goes flat."
[...]
"This suggests substantial nonfood exposure, accumulation in body tissues such as fat, or both," the researchers wrote in their paper released today by Environmental Health Perspectives.
That may explain why 93 percent of Americans carry BPA in their bodies, according to the CDC, or it could be that exposure is coming through different routes than food, such as the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes often used for water lines in modern homes.
[...]
The U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program—a government program that coordinates federal studies of chemicals' adverse effects—warns that BPA exposure may lead to abnormal development in infants and the Canadian government last year banned its use in baby bottles. But the American Chemistry Council, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintain that BPA is safe.
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BPA is now present in 95% of Americans.1 During the last few decades, the substance has become a key ingredient in plastics and resins used in food and beverage containers, and now more than 180 studies link low-dose exposure to many diseases of modern life.2
Most of the clear, shatterproof plastics used to make baby bottles, food storage containers, small kitchen appliances, and rigid water bottles include this material. It is also used in the linings of food, infant formula, beer, and soft drink cans.
BPA has been known as an endocrine disruptor since the 1930s,3 and in the past 10 years, BPA exposure has been linked to a long list of diseases and disorders ranging from infertility, obesity, early puberty, breast and prostate cancer, to diabetes, thyroid malfunction and even attention deficit disorders. These linkages have been observed at extremely low doses, to which most Americans are exposed.4
HealthyToys.org has updated its website for this holiday season with a searchable database of the chemical test results on over 1,500 children's toys. As reported in the Hartford Courant, Connecticut was one of the first states to ban lead and asbestos in children's products, but more stringent national restrictions have yet to take effect.
Because toys do not come with a list of chemical ingredients, the HealthyToys.org website is a critically important resource for anybody shopping for a little one. Fortunately, there are three easy ways to access the information in the HealthyToys.org database:
The have also compiled two lists. Their list of the best toys includes 268 products with no detectable traces of Lead, Cadmium, Chlorine, Arsenic, Mercury, Antimony, Tin, Bromine, or Chromium in any components tested. Their list of the worst toys includes those containing Lead, Bromine, Cadmium, Arsenic, and Mercury.
Environmental group says many items for sale have high levels of lead, arsenic and other chemicals.
By Catherine Clifford, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: December 3, 2008: 5:03 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- One in three toys tested was found to contain toxic chemicals such as lead, flame retardants and arsenic, according to a report issued Wednesday by an environmental group.
Researchers for the Michigan-based Ecology Center tested more than 1,500 popular toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals. They said they found that one-third of the toys contain "medium" or "high" levels of chemicals of concern.
"Our hope is that by empowering consumers with this information, manufacturers and lawmakers will feel the pressure to start phasing out the most harmful substances immediately, and to change the nation's laws to protect children from highly toxic chemicals," said Ecology Center's Jeff Gearhart, who led the research, in a written release.
Tired of wondering how much toxic BPA you ate for dinner? Frustrated that the federal government has failed to take the most basic step of phasing out this hazardous, unnecessary substance from food and beverage containers?
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Most of the clear, shatterproof plastics used to make baby bottles, food storage containers, small kitchen appliances, and rigid water bottles include this material. It is also used in the linings of food, infant formula, beer, and soft drink cans.
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