Toxics

Toxics

Toxic waste from industry, hazardous household materials, pesticides and auto emissions are polluting our air and water and endangering our health at home and in the workplace.  More than 80,000 chemicals permitted in the United States have never been fully assessed for toxic impacts on human health and the environment. Cancer, learning disabilities, infertility and birth defects have all been associated with exposure to toxic chemicals. These chemicals have been found in children’s baby bottles and car seats, cleaning products, building materials, cosmetics, fabrics, toys, furniture, electronics, food and beverage containers and many other consumer products.

Cry Wolf Quotes

To destroy or seriously cripple the asbestos industry in this country through hastily developed or unnecessarily severe regulations will benefit neither the employee, the industry, nor the country as a whole, and could quite possibly have serious economic, social, and other consequences both now and in the future.

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J.B. Jobe, Executive vice president of Johns-Manville Corporation, the largest asbestos mining company in the world.
03/16/1972 | Full Details | Law(s): OSHA's Asbestos Standard

The [vinyl chloride standard would be the] tip of an enormous regulatory iceberg….If government allows workers to be exposed to the gas, some of them may die. If it eliminates all exposure a valuable industry may disappear.

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Paul H. Weaver, Fortune Magazine.

There is no evidence that ingestion of asbestos fiber is any way harmful.

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Bruce J. Phillips of Certain-Teed Products Corporation (an asbestos-cement pipe making company).
03/14/1972 | Full Details | Law(s): OSHA's Asbestos Standard

To the extent that it makes the manufacture of asbestos materials in the United States technologically unfeasible or uneconomic, it will force the purchase abroad of products for which there is no-asbestos substitute, with consequential losses in profit, increases in unemployment, and deterioration in the nation’s balance of payments.

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Guy Gabrielson, Jr. President of Nicolet Industries, Incorporated
03/16/1972 | Full Details | Law(s): OSHA's Asbestos Standard

Evidence

Backgrounders & Briefs

The Secret History of Lead

This immense article is an intricately detailed history of leaded gasoline, from the industry's early cover-ups to their attempts to defeat EPA regulations.

The Removal of Lead From Gasoline: Historical and Personal Reflections

First-person historical analysis of the leaded gasoline fight.