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Debate Over Banning Chemical Flame Retardants Begins Anew

The battles over toxic chemical regulation in Olympia witnessed another skirmish before the House Environment Committee Monday afternoon, in a hearing on a bill over banning six flame retardants in children’s products and furniture.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, told the committee the legislation was in the same form as one that passed the House last session but failed to make it out of the Senate.

Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-24

Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim

He said he was bringing it back this session because the flame retardants are too prevalent in the environment, where they don’t break down, and because they’re carcinogens. The bill has three Republican co-sponsors in Reps. David Taylor of Moxee, Matt Shea of Spokane and Chad Magendanz of Issaquah.

He said they also pose health threats to firefighters because the chemicals are released when the products that contain them ignite, which means emergency responders are at risk of absorbing them. The committee took public testimony but didn’t vote on the bill.

“When it burns it releases these chemicals very quickly,” Van De Wege said. “They are carcinogenic.”

If passed and signed by the governor, the bill would ban the sale, manufacture or distribution of any products containing the flame retardants by mid-2016. It follows in the footsteps of a ban on a previous fire retardant called polybrominated diphynl ethers, in the 2007 legislative session. That led manufacturers to switch to the chemicals, including some called Tris, now up for banning under Van De Wege’s bill.

But the overarching concern expressed by Association of Washington Business lobbyist Brandon Houskeeper was the method in which these chemicals would be banned. In 2011 the Department of Ecology created a list of 66 chemicals of “high concern” that included one of the flame retardants, and another was added subsequently.

The list, Houskeeper said, develops reporting standards manufacturers and industries have to comply with, but he noted that they are now being targeted for bans, which he called “a backdoor process.”

He urged lawmakers to wait for a forthcoming study from Ecology, which was funded in last year’s budget. Carol Kraege, a lead on toxic chemicals for the department, told the committee she expected the study to be completed this week.

“We think this bill is the cart before the horse,” Houskeeper said.

This is one area of many where the Legislature, business trade associations, environmental groups and the Inslee administration are wrangling over how to regulate chemical use in Washington state. The governor has proposed legislation that would take the authority to ban chemicals from the Legislature and put it under Ecology’s umbrella.

Inslee’s argument, with the backing of Ecology staff and some environmental groups, is it provides a more reasoned, scientific approach to what’s considered a safe chemical and what isn’t, but trade groups like AWB see another step to giving Ecology control over critical processes for industrial and manufacturing production in Washington state.

The toxics reduction bill is tied to a rule-making process Ecology is undertaking on the fish-consumption rate, which would mean more stringent standards for about 70 chemicals in use currently. Ecology released the draft rule on fish consumption on the first day of session last week, and Ecology said the fate of that rule, which would hit some of the major companies such as aerospace industry giant Boeing, was tied to the outcome of the toxics reduction bill.

Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale and chair of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee, has sponsored a competing measure on toxics that’s slated for a hearing in his committee at 1:30 Thursday afternoon.

The debate Monday harkened back to the discussions of the PBDE bans eight years ago — the flame retardants, which became commonplace among U.S. manufacturers after California instituted a requirement that they be included, are showing up in tests of house dusts and other methods for bioaccumulation in humans.

Erika Schreder, science director for the Washington Toxics Coalition, testified that they’re carcinogenic based on lab tests with rodents, and pose reproductive and developmental harm to children.

But one of the criticisms of the PBDE ban is that it just prodded manufacturing firms to use a different alternative, which is now being considered for bans. Kraege said the original ban didn’t give her department a mechanism for addressing “regrettable substitutes.”

Correction appended 1/19: This post has been updated to reflect the correct number of chemicals addressed in the legislation.


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