News Releases By Date

News Releases By Date!
Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the U.S. EPA Legislative Hearing on the Toxic Substances Control Act. (TSCA) to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. (12/02/09).

Administrator Jackson appeared before The Senate Committee on the Environment & Public works. Administrator Jackson is coming to the Senate, part of the arm of government that makes or changes law. She comes with her homework done!

All in all Lisa Jackson is asking the Law Makers to untie the hands of the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency is charged with protecting human health in the U.S. and globe. If they are unable to gain regulatory teeth, unable to get co-operation from those chemical producers, then something is very wrong.

I can hear the Brethren scream with no thought; "I suppose you want to see the end of the economy." "You don't want progress." "You're going to send us back a hundred years." It has all been said before, and it is still not true.

Ms. Jackson sites the terrible time and trouble expended in trying to get rid of asbestos. Everyone knows that stuff is bad. Everyone. But as Lisa Jackson states, because of TSCA (that Act that was supposed to protect people from chemicals used in commerce...) there were so many hurdles experienced, and in 1989, a federal court over turned EPA's ruling against its use and hazards. There are so many road-blocks in obtaining information and testing on some 80,000 chemicals there is no telling what humans world wide are being exposed to.

Hopefully, your Senators will hear the voice of the people who put them into office. Lisa Jackson is doing the job she was appointed to do. She is not sitting behind a desk, pushing paper. She has been all over our Country looking at situations and problems first hand. She is working for the citizens of the U.S. and world.

Director Jackson makes six points of impacts, and six specific things she is asking of this Senatorial Committee. (Snippets of each point)
1. Chemicals need to be reviewed against known safety standards and health risk criteria...
2. The responsibility for being transparent regarding health and safety information to the public lies on industry...
3. The EPA should have a clear authority to take risk management actions when human health is at risk, especially the young and weak among us...
4. The EPA should have clear authority to set priorities for conducting inspections. The chemical companies should operate within a timely framework...
5. To keep an open book to the public, while working to develop green technologies and business practices...
6. The agencies that regulate the chemical producers should be funded and be given authority when it comes to human health, and chemical producers should remain transparent...

Overall, TSCA needs to be brought into the 21st Century...

I just paraphrased the six points presented, please read the entire announcement for exact quotes and phrases.

It is refreshing to see those who are paid to serve the public do just that! Kudos Lisa Jackson ~ The Mother thanks you.

[My two-cents: Going back to the inception of the TSCA in 1976, it was enacted at a time when those who were fighting major industrial polluters to remove lead from the air, and other particulate matter. It was a time of change when awareness of affects on human health when using polluted waters and take food from polluted water. It was in these late 1970's that we were learning that if you put a toxic substance on the ground, or in liquid into the ground, it can contaminate anything grown, and wells and aquifers.

It is obvious that Chemical producers, and all the commerce that includes, could see the writing on the wall. Instead of waiting to be next on the awareness movements agenda, they would go ahead and help pass the TSCA smoothly, exempting those who would have the most cleaning and answering to do. Tying the hands of regulators...The dirtiest polluters are usually the ones making the largest profits. I will give credit where credit is due; they have made some amazingly high paying positions and providing some jobs in the communities they inhabit.]