At MNN, we’ve told you about formaldehyde in baby shampoo, bisphenol-A in canned food, and neurotoxins in veggie burgers—all environmental pollutants allowed in our daily lives due to lax governmental regulations. Lest you thought we were overreacting or exaggerating: Today, the President’s Cancer Panel is pointing to this type of prevalent chemical pollution as a problem that’s causing “grievous harm” to the health of Americans—and urging Obama to take action.
The American people—even before they are born—are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures. The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.
With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are … understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers.While BPA has received considerable media coverage, the public remains unaware of many common environmental carcinogens such as naturally occurring radon and manufacturing and combustion by-products such as formaldehyde and benzene.
Siel Ju blogs about health, beauty, and life for the Mother Nature Network.
Related Articles on Mother Nature Network:
Another headache for Johnson & Johnson
BPA: Is plastic poisoning our food?
Popular veggie burgers made with neurotoxin
Photo (cc) by Flickr user tracyyxx via Mother Nature Network
