Flame retardants in everything from
couch cushions to tents may be poisoning us all for no good reason.
Popular
activities like hiking, camping, and backpacking come with all kinds of risks.
You can get heat stroke or hypothermia, run out of water, fall off a cliff, and
bump into cougars or grizzly bears. If you get close enough to an infected
ground squirrel for one of their fleas to hop onto your skin, there’s a chance
you’ll catch bubonic plague.
Perhaps
the only way to actually avoid risk is to stay at home indoors. Only if you do
that, you’ll be at risk of diabetes and heart disease from a sedentary
lifestyle — so you’d better go outside.
In
other words, our lives are full of risks. Our job is to manage them. Sometimes
it’s easy: Don’t hitchhike, don’t smoke, and wear a seatbelt. Sometimes, it’s
more complicated.
Case
in point: flame retardants. Getting burnt up in a fire is scary. But many flame
retardants are toxic. In fact, many flame retardants used in textiles and
electronics are chemically related to pesticides like DDT or chlorpyrifos. Some cause
cancer, and many persist in the environment for decades.
Whether
we’re spending time indoors or outside, do these chemicals really enhance our
safety?
In
2012, the Chicago Tribune exposed
the fact that many laws requiring flame retardants were initially put in place
due to tobacco and chemical industry lobbying. A series of articles showed how
these industries falsified and misinterpreted studies showing how many lives
could be saved.
Flame
retardant laws essentially gave the chemical companies that made them a rich
new market while doing little to help prevent fires. Flame retardants also
distracted the public from the dangers of smoldering cigarettes as the cause of
fires in homes and on campsites.
By
the time of these revelations, regulators had turned against the most common
flame retardants, a group of chemicals called PBDEs. Two of the three most
common versions were phased out internationally by the Stockholm Convention on
Persistent Organic Pollutants, a treaty that bans the worst of the worst
chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency convinced the major
manufacturers of the third PBDE to stop making itas
of 2013.
That
same year, California
overturned its 1975 law requiring flame retardants in all couch
cushions. Because many companies don’t want to make two sets of couches (one
for California, one for everywhere else), the law meant that many sofas
throughout the country contained flame retardants.
And
yet, several states still have laws requiring flame retardants in common
consumer products — from kids pajamas to camping tents. Manufacturers typically
respond by putting the chemicals in products sold across the country.
The
chemicals don’t make your furniture or camping gear fire-proof. Plus, modern
tents are so lightweight that they have little fuel for a fire anyway.
A
2014 study found
that many tents contained a cancer-causing chemical — and it came off on
campers hands when they pitched the tent. Simply washing your tent won’t get
rid of these chemicals. Manufacturers will soon phase out that chemical, but
it’s being replaced with a new one that isn’t much better. Chemist Arlene Blum calls
this “toxic whack-a-mole.”
Companies
that make and sell tents refuse to say which chemicals they use, so consumers
can’t even make an informed choice. When I spoke to employees of companies that
manufacture tents, they told me they do not want to poison their customers.
They wish the law would change — and they think the only way to change it is if
their customers speak up.
You
can contact your lawmakers, but make sure to also tell the store where you shop
for tents that you want one without flame retardants. If enough people
complain, REI, Cabela’s, L.L.Bean, and other vendors that sell outdoor
equipment might respond.
Flame
retardants are poisoning more people than they are saving. We need to speak up
and get the outdated laws that mandate their use off the books.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is
the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and
What We Can Do to Fix It. You can read her longer article
about toxic tents at AlterNet.org OtherWords.org