See our Killer Cribs Report highlighted in a CBS National News Exclusive on toxic fire retardant chemicals. Watch Part One and Part Two.
Friends of the Earth is taking action to limit the use of these chemicals in consumer products and is the sponsor of SB 772 (Leno), a two-year bill up for reintroduction in 2010 in the California State Legislature. If passed, SB 772 will lead to the removal of toxic and unnecessary halogenated fire retardants in baby products such as strollers, bassinets, infant carriers, and nursing pillows. Please see our fact sheet (pdf) on SB 772 for more information.
Technical Bulletin 117, a California state flammability regulation requiring that the foam in furniture and baby products resist an open flame for twelve seconds, has led to the annual use of millions of pounds of halogenated fire retardant chemicals in California since the early 1980’s. However, there is no evidence from federal or state agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the Bureau of Home Furnishings that these products actually pose a fire hazard.
In addition, according to the National Fire Protection Association, there is no credible evidence that fire retardants actually reduce fire deaths in California. Fire deaths declined by 38% in California from 1980 to 1999, but the decline was even greater in other states that don’t have standards leading to the use of these toxic chemicals.
In accordance with concerns expressed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, SB 772 modifies Technical Bulletin 117 to exempt juvenile products containing polyurethane foam such as cribs, removable child car seats, strollers, and nursing pillows from a de facto mandate that they be treated with halogenated fire retardants.
In 2009, SB 772 passed through the California Senate, but did not pass the Assembly Appropriations Committee due to heavy chemical industry lobbying. SB 772 is now a two-year bill and will be reconsidered next year. Please see our fact sheet on SB 772 for more information.
Halogenated fire retardants, which are the least expensive and most likely chemicals to be used to meet TB 117, have been linked to endocrine disruption, neurological and developmental impairments, cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities, such as attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, and a host of other health disorders in many dozens of animal studies. The chemicals migrate from products in the home into household dust, humans, pets, and the environment.
A typical household can contain collectively up to several pounds of these chemicals in products such as sofas and baby cribs. The extensive use of these chemicals has not only damaged our bodies, but has led to contamination of the global environment so that fire retardants are now being detected in aquatic life as far away as the Arctic Circle. Unfortunately, fire retardants are now entering the food chain, and are found especially in dairy products, meat, poultry, and fish.
Top consumer product regulators understand the dangers these chemicals pose. In December of 2007, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted for a draft furniture flammability standard that will reduce the use of such fire retardants nationwide. CPSC Commissioner Thomas Moore concluded that “No one wants to trade fire risks for chemical toxicity risks.”
Halogenated fire retardants have been documented in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to cause serious health problems such as cancer, reproductive, developmental and neurological disorders including birth defects, learning disorders, mental retardation, hyperactivity and ADHD. These chemicals disproportionately impact young children, who are particularly likely to absorb these compounds through direct physical or oral contact with them in strollers, 
car seats and furniture.
Young children also ingest these substances from their mothers’ bodies. These fat-loving chemicals cross the placenta and accumulate in body fat and breast milk. Babies are now born with fire retardants in their bodies and get an additional dose from their mother’s milk and from exposure to baby products, resulting in toddlers having three times greater levels than their mothers. Studies now show that levels of halogenated fire retardants in breast milk have increased forty-fold since the 1970s.
Californians have the highest body burdens in the world of pentaBDE, a potent endocrine-disrupting halogneted fire retardant. This toxic chemical is halfway in structure between PCBs and dioxins, both of which are widely known to be highly carcinogenic chemicals. While pentaBDE is now banned, its chemical cousins are present in the polyurethane foam in baby products including cribs, car seats, strollers, playpens, high chairs, etc.—items that infants and young children come into repeated contact with every day.
The Safe Kids campaign was developed to protect public and environmental health by working towards the phase-out of highly toxic chemicals called halogenated fire retardants.*
On the federal level, in 2008 we applied pressure to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish a national flammability standard for furniture that discourages the use of toxic flame retardants. As of September 2008, the CPSC has responded to our efforts and is in the process of moving towards the standard that we favor—a significant national victory!
On the international level, we are pleased to report that we helped to defeat two electronics standards that would have led to the use of high levels of halogenated fire retardants in the plastic housings of electronics. Through the work of a strong international coalition of NGOs, scientists, and physicians -- which we helped to build -- these standards were defeated in 2008.
These standards, which were under consideration by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), were five years in the making and were developed through a largely secretive process, without public knowledge or scrutiny. We learned that the standards were pushed by the chemical industry to expand their markets and were largely unnecessary, lacking the fire data to support them. In 2002, the U.S. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) concluded that the problem of candle fires in electronics does not pose a level of risk that should be considered a safety policy priority. This conclusion was further validated in another NFPA study in 2007.
Tackling these two IEC standards raised an important issue: that of what to do with plastic that has been treated with halogenated fire retardants. It can be difficult to safely recycle this plastic in a cost-effective manner. If burned, it releases toxic chemicals called dioxins and furans. If land-filled, fire retardant chemicals can leach into the environment.
Due to these end-of-life issues, we want to ensure that as little plastic as possible is treated with toxic halogenated fire retardants. For the products that have already been treated, however, we need producers to take responsibility for their products and commit to responsible disposal or recycling. To this end, we worked with the Electronics TakeBack Campaign to call on television manufacturers to commit to taking back their products and disposing of them properly.
The Safe Kids Campaign also co-sponsored legislation in California in 2007 and 2008 to end the use of toxic halogenated fire retardants in furniture and baby products. This bill, Assemblyman Mark Leno’s AB 706: The Crystal Golden-Jefferson Fire Prevention Act, addressed the use of halogenated fire retardants in all upholstered furniture and baby products covered by California’s flammability standard, Technical Bulletin (TB 117). The bill was aligned with the Governor’ Schwarzenegger’s Green Chemistry Initiative, and promoted the use of safer, less toxic fire retardant methods such as internal fire resistant barriers, fire resistant upholstery fibers, boric acid, melamine and phosphate based chemicals.
Unfortunately, AB 706 fell several votes shy of passing in the State Senate in fall 2008. This was primarily due to opposition by Governor Schwarzenegger's office. One of the most successful pieces of the AB706 campaign was the creation of a large and diverse coalition of supporters for the bill, including firefighters, consumers, labor, environmental and parent groups. The work has also educated citizens about the dangers of halogenated fire retardants. Great thanks to MOMS (Making Our Milk Safe), MomsRising.org, the Green Science Policy Institute, and all of the other supporters of AB 706.
* For the sake of simplicity, we refer to brominated and chlorinated fire retardants (BFRs and CFRs) as halogenated fire retardants. This is inclusive also of PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), a sub-class of BFRs. Technically, the term halogenated includes other compounds such as fluorine and iodine.
