Are You Sitting on a Cancer-Causing Couch? [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/01/are-you-sitting-cancer-causing-couch?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-10-01



(Photo: Getty Images)


Activists hope a new California law requiring manufacturers to label furniture containing toxic flame retardants means the end of a national health hazard.

October 01, 2014 By Todd Woody

Todd Woody is TakePart's senior editor for environment and wildlife.

rget California’s new statewide ban on plastic bags for a moment. On Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown also signed into law legislation that could have just as far-reaching consequences for human health and the environment—a mandate that manufacturers disclose on a label whether couches and other furniture contain carcinogenic flame retardants.

A typical couch contains one pound or more of flame-retardant chemicals that have been linked to cancer and developmental delays in children. As furniture ages and becomes worn, particles of chemical-treated foam become mixed with household dust inhaled by children and others. Research published earlier this year by Duke University scientists, for instance, found that a group of toddlers they tested had nearly five times the levels of nonchlorinated aryl organophosphate flame retardants in their bodies than their mothers.

“A study by the California Environmental Protection Agency found that women in California have much higher levels of toxic flame retardants in their breast tissue than women in other states and countries,” the preamble to the new law states. “Studies published in the journal Environmental Research show that children in California have much higher levels of flame-retardant chemicals than children elsewhere in the country.”



In fact, it was California that in 1975 required furniture manufacturers to meet a burn test, which they did by adding flame retardants to their products.

But there’s more to the story.

FULL story at link.