Pollution Found in Five Extraordinary Women Leaders.

(From AScribe)

WASHINGTON -- An unprecedented two-year study commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), funded by Rachel's Network and conducted by four independent research laboratories in the United States, Canada and The Netherlands has documented up to 48 toxic chemicals in the blood of five prominent minority women leaders in the environmental justice movement from Texas, Louisiana, California and Wisconsin.

Testing was targeted toward compounds that are heavily used in everyday consumer products but that have escaped effective regulation under the antiquated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The results underscore the widespread and systemic failure of current law to protect the public from chemicals, many of which persist in the environment for decades or far longer, that are associated in animal studies with cancer, reproductive problems and behavioral effects. "While the discovery of chemical pollutants in the blood and urine of these women shouldn't come as a surprise, it does call attention to the abject failure of the federal toxics law to protect Americans from potentially toxic chemicals that lurk in everyday consumer products," said EWG senior scientist Dr. Anila Jacob, M.D., M.P.H.

The women leaders have spent years deeply engaged in battles to rid their communities of air and water pollution from local manufacturing plants, hazardous waste dumps, oil refineries and conventional agriculture. And, though they live thousands of miles apart, come from distinctive ...