Rep. Hannah Pingree

You’ve probably seen or heard the ad campaign by now.

On television and the radio, and in most of the major newspapers in Maine, the chemical industry has launched an all-out attack against a bill I sponsored to phase a dangerous chemical out of Maine households. The chemical – a flame retardant known as deca-BDE – has proven dangerous to humans, animals and the environment. The bill would strictly phase deca out of products in Maine households, although the industry’s scare tactics would have you believe the legislature wants to ban all flame retardants and turn Maine homes into super-flammable kindling. It’s a dangerous and inaccurate smear campaign that the chemical industry has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch.

Deca is the only remaining PBDE that is still used in household materials in the United States. The Maine Legislature banned two other PBDEs - octa and penta-BDE - in 2004, and the industry stopped manufacturing them shortly after. The older category of flame retardants have proven to cause harm to humans and the environment, and scientific research has found traces of the deca chemical in animals and human breast milk, and tied its presence to brain development issues in children.

And it gets worse. Scientific evidence proves that once introduced in the body or exposed to sunlight, deca has been shown to break down into more dangerous chemical compounds like octa and penta-BDE.

Dr. Deborah Rice of the Maine Center for Disease Control provided a series of slides to the Natural Resources Committee showing evidence of deca in human infants, human breast milk and a broad range of animals. She described tests performed by scientists in Sweden and by the Maine CDC on young mice in a stage of development similar to a fetus in its third trimester, which showed decreased motor activity after just one exposure to deca.

She said that the mice pups showed delayed motor skills including reflex response and hand and forearm strength, and decreased thyroid levels after a single exposure.

The only reasoning that anyone could use to defend this product is that it must really prevent fires and save lives. But the Maine Fire Chiefs, Professional Firefighters of Maine, the state Fire Marshal and the Maine Fire Commission have also stood firm in support of the ban, saying that safer and equally effective alternatives are available – and in the case of a fire, deca only becomes more dangerous.

The firefighters say deca poses a real cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary threat during and long after they leave the scene of the fire, because it absorbs into their protective uniforms, which are then brought back to the fire station – and sometimes their homes. The chemical also burns into a thicker smoke that is more difficult for them to navigate through during a fire.

I should make it clear that the Maine Legislature would not consider banning a product from the state’s environment without good reason, and extensive research. This bill is the result of a three year study that has provided irrefutable proof that deca is harmful, there are better and safer alternatives and it doesn’t belong in our homes.

Now consider the two sides of the issue, and who is lining up on each side.

On the one hand, you have the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, the Department of Environmental Protection, the American Lung Association of Maine, the Maine Fire Chiefs Association, the Professional Firefighters of Maine and the Maine Fire Marshal - along with more than 30 environmental and health groups across the state supporting the ban.

On the other hand, you have the chemical industry. The only people who spoke against the bill were out of state representatives from big chemical companies. Not even manufacturers of televisions, computers or furniture – the industries that would have to change their own practices if the bill passes – showed up to speak against it. In fact, many of the major electronic and furniture manufacturers have already started to move away from deca to safer alternatives voluntarily because they share the same concerns we do.

The battle over this bill has come down to the long list of health and environmental advocates and firefighters presenting the facts, versus the deep pockets of the chemical manufacturers presenting an expensive and misleading ad campaign.

The people who have come out in support of the ban are Maine people who care about the health and safety of other Maine people. The people who have opposed it have been paid mouthpieces for the chemical industry. It’s Maine people versus big money from out of state.

Who do you believe?

Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, is the House Majority Leader.

Rep. Josh Tardy

Toxic chemicals are not partisan political issues. Health and safety matters cut across party lines. And when people are vulnerable to dangerous chemicals, we should move quickly to protect them by eliminating the toxins, especially from household use. At the same time, the actions should make sense and be based on sound science. We must be careful that we not replace one bad chemical with something just as bad.

We now have before us in the Legislature a bill dealing with a widely used flame retardant known as Deca-BDE. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Hannah Pingree, would restrict the manufacture, sale and distribution in Maine of products containing this chemical compound, beginning in 2010. Deca is one of the best flame retardants known to science. It is added to plastic to prevent it from bursting into flames in the event of a fire.

The Pingree bill builds on action taken by the Maine Legislature in 2004, when it banned Deca's molecular cousins – Penta-BDE and Octa-BDE – but left the Deca version alone. It required only that it be studied by the Department of Environmental Protection, in hopes of identifying safer alternatives to the Deca mixture.

Common sense would dictate that Deca be used until a safe and reliable substitute can be found. I don't think we have one yet. The DEP has identified one potential alternative, known as RDP, but this is problematic. The DEP's own research report states that laboratory studies on RDP "documented high toxicity to aquatic organisms."

RDP has been available as a commercial product for more than a decade. It has never been identified by any agency or jurisdiction in the world as "safer" than Deca-BDE. RDP has a bio-concentration factor that is thousands of times higher than Deca, meaning RDP has a much greater potential for bio-accumulation in humans and other creatures. Moreover, the production of resorcinol, RDP's base ingredient, raises its own set of potential environmental and human health concerns.

Deca, by contrast, almost gets a clean bill of health. The European Union has exempted Deca from further regulation, and manufacturers there are free to use commercial Deca in products made or sold in the European Union.

Opponents of Deca claim that Sweden has banned all uses of Deca-BDE. The fact is that Sweden has enacted a limited ban on the use of Deca in some products, but not in electronics, electrical equipment and cars – Deca's most common applications. Sweden has been formally notified that its unilateral actions are contrary to EU law, and it is expected that this limited ban will be overturned.

Those who want Deca banned claim that it is present at high levels in the environment and in breast milk. While Deca may be detected in the environment, the levels are extremely low – well below any level suggested by regulatory authorities as posing a cause for concern.

Deca has been found in breast milk samples, but the highest levels ever reported are less than 500 parts per trillion, and most reported levels are much lower than that. For perspective a part per trillion is equivalent to one second in 32,000 years.

Proponents of LD 1658, the Pingree bill, claim that the Maine firefighting community supports the legislation. But the fire community has said they will not do anything that diminishes fire safety. By banning Deca, we would be banning the most effective, efficient and practical flame retardant available. Without a viable alternative to replace it, a ban will increase the likelihood of fires, injuries and deaths.

There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the presence of Deca in materials involved in a live fire creates an added hazard to firefighters. .Put simply, when something that contains Deca does burn, it's the smoke and fumes from the plastic and other substances that present risks, not the Deca.

We need to remember that the whole point of Deca is to prevent fires. Flame retardants play a critical role in making homes, apartments, hospitals, nursing homes, offices, cars and public transportation safer from the consequences of fire. Despite advances in safety, technology and building codes, fires and burns are the fifth most common cause of injury deaths in the United States – and the third leading cause of fatal home injury.

Rep. Pingree's bill is officially entitled "An Act to Protect Pregnant Women and Children from Toxic Chemicals Released into the Home." The truth is much more complicated than the title of the bill would imply. But that is often the case in "controversial" environmental matters.

Rep. Josh Tardy, R-Newport, is the House Minority Leader.