A Better Way To Clean

Did you know that in the U.S. regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before its use can be restricted or banned from the market? Well, new laws from the European Union put the onus on companies to prove that a chemical is safe before it enters the EU marketplace. As Lyndsey Layton of The Washington Post reports “The European Union’s tough stance on chemical regulation is the latest area in which the Europeans are reshaping business practices with demands that American companies either comply or lose access to a market of 27 countries and nearly 500 million people.”.

While these laws only affect sales of products sold within European borders U.S. companies will need to make considerable changes to participate there.

But we’re not powerless in the U.S. We can help bring these safe products here through our influence as consumers. We’ve already seen consumer concern forcing change. Take the example of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in plastics. An outcry over its use in baby bottles resulted in major U.S. retailers pulling products containing the chemical from their shelves and replacing them with BPA-free baby bottles.

Safe chemicals coming to humans everywhere soon. We hope.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm and is filed under A Better Way To Clean, Clean Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.