The compilation is a year-long project of Sonoma State University, managed by students of the School of Social Sciences who submit news which they think has been underreported, ignored, misrepresented or otherwise censored by the US corporate news outlets. These stories are then judged by a panel who presently or in the past has included Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, Howard Zinn, Erna Smith, until a final 25 stories are selected for publication.
Because of our recent discussions here at AMERICAblog about dangerous and even lethal Chinese products now flooding our markets, #5 on the list, an article titled Europe Blocks US Toxic Products, jumped out at me:
Hundreds of companies located in the US produce or import hundreds of chemicals designated as dangerous by the European Union. Large amounts of these chemicals are being produced in thirty-seven states, in as many as eighty-seven sites per state, according to biochemist Richard Denison of Environmental Defense Fund, author of the report “Across the Pond: Assessing REACH’s First Big Impact on US Companies and Chemicals.”
Of the 267 chemicals on the potential REACH list, compiled by the International Chemical Secretariat in Sweden, only one third have ever been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and only two are regulated in any form under US law.
Industry’s evisceration of the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and a host of regulatory agencies, has placed US firms in a position of unaccountability.
As a result of the contrast between US deregulation and the spreading European model of regulation, the US has become the dumping ground for toxic toys, electronics and cosmetics. We produce and consume the toxic materials, from which other countries around the world are protected.
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