OEcotextiles

Please take a look at our new retail website, www.twosistersecotextiles.com!

While asbestos is illegal in more than 50 countries, the United States is not among them. The EPA tried to make asbestos containing products illegal in 1989, and succeeded temporarily. But the ruling was overturned in 1991 after the court found the EPA hadn’t considered the cost to industry of an asbestos ban, and therefore the agency hadn’t met its obligations user TSCA, even though the chemical is a known carcinogen[1].

The Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) gave the EPA, only six years old itself at the time, the authority to regulate the safety of industrial chemicals in order to protect the environment and human health. However, because of a combination of limitations in the statute and a series of events over the past 40 years (reductions in the EPA’s budget, limited oversight by Congress, and successful challenges by the chemical industry to limit the EPA’s authority), the TSCA is widely recognized as ineffective and out of date. It had no teeth:

We assumed the TSCA was testing and regulating chemicals used in the industry[2]. It was not:

• Of the more than 60,000 chemicals  in use prior to 1976, most were “grandfathered in”; only 263 were tested for safety and only 5 were restricted.  Today over 80,000 chemicals are routinely used in industry, and the number which have been tested for safety has not materially changed since 1976.  So we cannot know the risks of exposing ourselves to certain chemicals.  The default position is that no information about a chemical = no action.
• The chemical spill which occurred in West Virginia in 2014 was of “crude MCHM”, or 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, one of the chemicals that was grandfathered into the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.   That means that nobody knows for sure what that chemical can do to us.
  • Carcinogenic effects? No information available.
  • Mutagenic effects? No information available.
  • Developmental toxicity? No information available.

Lack of information is the reason the local and federal authorities were so unsure of how to advise the local population about their drinking  water supplies.  (And by the way, in January 2014, a federal lawsuit was filed in Charleston, WV, which claims that the manufacturer of MCHM hid “highly toxic and carcinogenic properties” of components of MCHM, hexane and methanol, both of which have been tested and found to cause diseases such as cancer).

We assumed that the TSCA required manufacturers to demonstrate that their chemicals are safe before they go into use. It did not:

• The TSCA says the government has to prove actual harm caused by the chemical in question before any controls can be put in place.  The catch-22 is that chemical companies don’t have to develop toxicity data or submit it to the EPA for an existing product unless the agency finds out that it will pose a risk to humans or the environment – which is difficult to do if there is no data in the first place.  Lack of evidence of harm is taken as evidence of no harm.
  • The EPA required a “Premanufacture Notification” of a new chemical, and no data of any kind was required [3].   The EPA receives between 40-50 each week and 8 out of 10 are approved, with or without test data, with no restrictions on their proposed use. As 3M puts it on their PMN forms posted on EPA’s web site, “You are not required to submit the listed test data if you do not have it.”
• We assumed that manufacturers must list all ingredients in a product, so if we have
• an allergy or reaction to certain chemicals we can check to see if the product is free of
• those chemicals. They do not:
  • The TSCA allows chemical manufacturers to keep ingredients in some products secret.   Nearly 20%, or 16,000 of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use today are considered “trade secrets”.  This makes it impossible for consumers to find out what’s actually in a product.  And there is no time limit on the period in which a chemical can be considered a trade secret.

The new “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act” (H.R. 2576 – which I’ll call the LCSA because it’s such a mouthful!) was passed by the Senate on June 7, 2016 and sent to the White House for President Obama’s signature. This is a slight improvement over the old TSCA, but not everybody is happy with the reform.  Consumers interested in making safer choices will still need to rely on third party assessments as the bill still does little to protect consumers. The bill was passed without the support of most environmental and public health groups, many of which released a letter opposing the proposal.

The bill “continues to have serious flaws that undermine protection of public health,” said the letter, “and we continue to be ready to work with senators to get those changes.” The letter was signed by representatives of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the United Steelworkers and the League of Conservation Voters. The Breast Cancer Fund, Center for Environmental Health and the Environmental Working Group all said the bill falls far short of what’s needed to protect the public from hazardous chemicals. Here’s what the Environmental Working Group’s President Ken Cook said:

Passage of the first legislation to regulate toxic industrial chemicals in 40 years ought to be cause for celebration, and it is—for the companies that make those toxic chemicals. As for the rest of us, we should be mad as hell.

 Despite the best efforts of many lawmakers to redeem legislation that originated in the c-suites of the chemical industry, on balance the law Congress will send to the president’s desk continues to place chemical company interests above the public interest.

 The public deserves a law strong enough to curb the abuses of an industry that clearly cannot be trusted. The toxic products of America’s chemical companies show up by the hundreds in the bodies of the American people, including babies still in the womb. Thousands of cities, school systems and water utilities nationwide are forced to clean up, or live with, water, air and toxic buildings rendered unsafe by the chemical industry’s hazardous products.

This is an industry that routinely poisons its own workers and the very communities in which it operates, and just as routinely lies about it.

 EWG fears this law will do too little to protect us from chemicals that cause cancer and nervous system disorders, impaired fertility, immune system dysfunction and a host of other problems.

Chemical companies have long ago lost the confidence of the American people, and this law will only fuel that mistrust. Because this law will not strongly and urgently address the problem of toxic chemical exposure, increasingly consumers will act to protect themselves. They will continue to reject products that contain unsafe chemicals; and manufacturers and retailers that listen to consumers will reformulate or reject those products.

 Indeed, more unsafe chemicals may be “regulated by retail” in the years ahead, and regulated faster and more stringently, than will be regulated by this legislation. Instead of raising confidence about the safety of chemicals and the products that contain them, this law will raise doubts—an outcome no one should be celebrating.

 “It’s a very ambitious undertaking — it’s going to be hard,” said James Aidala, the former head of EPA’s chemical safety office and a consultant at Bergeson & Campbell. “It is going to take a long time, even if the administration gives the program a slug of money on day one.”[4]

The new act contains many loopholes, the most controversial of which prevents individual states from creating restrictions on a chemical if the EPA has decided to conduct a risk evaluation of that chemical.  This is called “preemption” – and once the EPA makes a final ruling on a chemical, the preemption becomes permanent.  So if the EPA decides to limit a chemical, a state will no longer be able to raise the bar with an outright ban or any other more stringent restriction.

This is a big deal. Due to political gridlock in Washington and the achingly slow pace of EPA reviews, many states have already taken the lead in protecting their communities from toxic chemicals. And by and large, they’ve done a pretty good job. For example, Maine successfully implemented strict safety standards on PBDEs, flame retardants which are linked to developmental issues in children, and on BPA, a potential carcinogen. These state-level reforms prompted national changes, leading major toymaker Hasbro to voluntarily remove BPA from all of its products.  Any state with a prohibition or restriction of a chemical enacted before April 22, 2016 will not be preempted – so California’s Proposition 65 and Massachusetts’ Toxics Use Reduction Act will be preserved.

Advocates of the act argue that states aren’t permanently banned from acting on these chemicals, but merely prevented from taking action while the EPA conducts its reviews. However, these reviews can take an enormous amount of time — we’re talking decades. As The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner has pointed out, “The EPA has been investigating the safety of some of the flame retardants that would be banned by the Washington state bill for more than 25 years. And the agency has spent at least 30 years looking at the safety of methylene chloride, which is still widely available in hardware stores though its fumes have been killing people since at least the 1940s.”

Another loophole would make it much harder for the EPA to prevent foreign products containing dangerous chemicals from being imported into the United States, making it even easier for toxic toys, furniture, and other consumer products to show up in American stores and homes.

Yet another loophole would push the EPA to designate many chemicals as “low priority,” without a full evaluation.

And, perhaps most troublingly, neither the Senate nor House version of the bill requires companies to prove new chemicals are safe before bringing them to market. The wording in the bill reads that a company must prove “no unreasonable risk of harm” which is weaker than the standard set for chemicals in other settings, which is they must prove “reasonable certainty of no harm”

What the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21^st Century will do for the EPA:

• Allows the EPA to review all chemicals currently used in commerce  and designated low- or high-priority – but at a slow pace: the EPA is only required to have 50 chemicals designated by 2021, so it theoretically could take centuries.
• It explicitly requires protection of vulnerable populations like children and pregnant women, who are at elevated risk.
• Allows the EPA to reassess confidential business information claims (CBI), which were widely used to withhold critical information from the EPA under TSCA. Under the LCSA, the EPA can share information with state and local governments, first responders, health providers and researchers as long as confidentiality is maintained. The current bill mandates that CBI claims must be substantiated as to why certain substances are confidential business information and must be renewed every 10 years.
• Allows the EPA to require additional testing of chemicals by industry without going through the lengthy rule-making process that was required under TSCA.

Remaining issues to be resolved:

• This regulation still does not give consumers a right to know what is in their products. Product and chemical transparency remain one of the biggest barriers to action and this bill does not make things any better.
• Chemical review will be extremely slow. EPA will likely only review 10-20 chemicals per year despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of registered chemicals, including at least 1000 which the EPA considers a high priority; 700 new chemicals are introduced every year.

Areas where the effect of the Bill is still unclear:

• Implementing a health standard rather than a cost-benefit standard for the assessment and regulation of chemicals. It appears that the EPA will only need to demonstrate health risks in order to prioritize chemicals, but that they may still need to pass the cost-benefit test in order to regulate a given chemical. Once a chemical is determined to be unsafe in a specific use or product, the EPA is mandated to eliminate that risk. However, before EPA can issue any rule restricting the uses of a harmful chemical, it must conduct a cost-benefit analysis that goes beyond the traditional type – an analysis that could slow the elimination of toxic chemicals from the market considerably and ultimately place economic concerns above health.
• It is not clear if the EPA will have the resources needed to meet the mandates of the new bill. Implementation of the proposed law will be a herculean task for an agency with scarce resources, former officials and lawyers say. By the time EPA finishes work on the chemicals it has prioritized, the children of today’s children will have been exposed to them — probably for years.[5]
• It is not clear how the review process for chemical prioritization works and how much influence companies will be able to exert over it.
• States’ ability to regulate chemicals of concern will be superseded by the federal regulation on a chemical by chemical basis. With the exception of California’s Proposition 65 and the Massachusetts Toxic Use Reduction Act which will both be unaffected by the new law, the federal ruling on a given chemical will take precedence.
• These limitations all help to perpetuate the chemical industry’s failure to innovate toward safer chemical and product design.  It’s one of the reasons the USA is one of the few nations in the world in which asbestos has not been banned in many products.

How did all these loopholes make it into the Senate’s final bill? Easy: the chemical industry spent tons of money to influence the legislation. Since 2014, while Congress was hashing out TSCA reform, the top 10 chemical companies and organizations spent more than $125 million on lobbying.[6] No wonder, then, that the pending updates to the TSCA have the blessing of more than 100 interest groups, from the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute to the Chamber of Commerce.

All of which helps explain why the chemical industry loves the legislation meant to regulate it. The American Chemistry Council, which supports both the House and Senate bills, represents more than 100 chemical companies, several of which stand to have their products spared from pending regulation, including the Occidental Chemical Corporation, manufacturer of methylene chloride, which California is in the process of restricting: Chemtura, which makes a flame retardant that would be banned by a bill pending in Washington state; and Eastman Chemical Company, which makes the plastics additive DEHP, which is under regulatory scrutiny in Maine.

The chemical industry has a direct financial stake in seeing this bill passed. If the Senate bill becomes law, individual states may be forced to abandon their safety efforts, allowing ACC members to continue producing and selling their chemicals without restraint. Just last year, California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer complained that one draft of the bill had been traced directly to an American Chemistry Council computer.[7]

 “As usual, industries willing to spend big on political contributions and lobbying get to write their own rules, even if it means hamstringing local governments and putting regular people in danger. It’s also a prime example of why anti-corruption reform is bringing together unlikely alliances of conservatives and progressives: when big money merges with big government, nobody wins.”[8]

[1] Hamblin, James, “Toxic Substances will now be somewhat regulated”, The Atlantic, May 26, 2016

[2] http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/factfiction/testing.asp

[3] http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/factfiction/testing.asp

[4] Traywick, Catherine and Kaskey, Jack; “EPA wins clout to fight toxic chemicals, but it may take a while”, June 8, 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-08/with-chemical-safety-law-congress-hands-epa-herculean-task

[5] Traywick, Catherine and Kaskey, Jack, op cit.

[6] Lerner, Sharon, “”Toxic “reform” law will gut state rules on dangerous chemicals”, The Intercept, January 11, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2016/01/11/toxic-reform-law-would-gut-state-rules-on-dangerous-chemicals/

[7] Dubose, Lou, “The American Chemistry Council’s Trojan Horse”, The Washington Spectator, June 1, 2015.

[8] Represent.us, “The Chemical Lobby Writes Its Own Law”, https://represent.us/action/chemical-lobby/

Have a look at our new retail website, http://www.twosistersecotextiles.com!

We haven’t talked about stain repellents for a few years (we last published a blog on the subject 4 years ago) and think it’s time to revisit the topic because of all the claims that some companies are making about “safe” stain repellents.

Here’s why stain repellents are simply doing us no good: All stain repellent finishes used in textiles are based on fluorotelomer chemistry – which means it pertains to chemicals which become  perfluorocarbons (PFCs) when they are released into the environment.   PFC’s  break down in the body and in the environment to  perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanyl sulfate (PFOS) and similar chemicals.  These are among the most persistent synthetic chemicals known to man. Scientists noticed in the 1970s that PFOS  was showing up everywhere: in polar bears, dolphins, baby eagles, tap water and human blood. So did its cousin PFOA.    These two man-made perfluorochemicals (PFOS and PFOA) don’t decompose in nature. They kill laboratory rats at higher doses, and are toxic to humans, with health effects ranging from birth or developmental effects, to the brain and nervous system, immune system (including sensitization and allergies) and some forms of cancer.  Once they are in the body, it takes decades to get them out – assuming you are exposed to no more. According to Our Stolen Future, the “PFOS story is likely to emerge as one of the apocryphal examples of 20th century experimentation with widespread chemical exposures: prolific use and almost no testing for safety, until unexpectedly and almost serendipitously, it is discovered as a contaminant virtually everywhere. And as is often the case in these stories, the company producing PFOS products possessed information hinting at its risks but chose not to share their data with regulators or the public for years.”[1]

Every American who has been tested for these chemicals have these hyper-persistent, toxic chemicals in their blood.[2] A growing number of researchers believe that fabric-based, stain-resistant coatings, which are ubiquitous, may be the largest environmental source of this controversial chemical family of PFCs. So now you will find companies advertising that they can provide stain repellents that “are free of harmful levels of” PFOS (perfluorooctane sulphonate) or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). What does that mean?

The PFC family is a group of man-made chemicals created using perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAA), all of which have a carbon backbone, with atoms of fluorine attached to them.  The PFAA’s are known as C4 to C14:   the numbers denote how many carbon atoms are present. Those with 8 or more carbon atoms are known as the “long-chain” PFC’s; PFOS and PFOA are two of the most common C8s. Those with fewer than 8 carbon atoms are called “short-chain” PFCs. The carbon-fluorine bonds in these chemicals are very, very strong and are resistant to high temperatures, acidic and alkaline solutions, and other environmental factors. In general, the longer the carbon chain, the more potent and persistent the chemical. The same chemistry that makes these chemicals so potent and useful also means they stick around for a long time in the environment and have the potential for wide-ranging and long-term health and environmental effects.

In January 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approached the eight largest fluorocarbon producers and requested their participation in the 2010/15 PFOA Stewardship Program. They wanted these manufacturers to commit to reduce PFOA and related chemicals globally in both facility emissions and product content by 95% by 2010, and 100% by 2015. Although the amount  of PFOA in finishing formulations has been greatly diminished and continues to go down, even parts per trillion are detectable.

So finishing formulators continue to evaluate new materials which can eliminate PFOA while maintaining performance – but a solution is still over the horizon.  One critical piece in this puzzle is that PFOA is also produced indirectly through the gradual breakdown of fluorotelomers – so a stain resistant finish may be formulated with no detectable amounts of PFOA yet STILL produce PFOA when the chemicals begin to decompose.

Since the EPA mandated that textile treatments can no longer contain these specific compounds, the industry is now using “short-chain” PFCs – C6 and C4 chemistries. These chemicals are considered safer because they are not as persistent or bioaccumulative as C8 – but there is little human data to support these contentions. Because these chemicals haven’t received as much scrutiny as their cousins, environmentally aware designers may wonder if we are substituting the devil we don’t know for the devil we know.

3M, which produces Scotchgard, was the first company to switch to the new C4 chemistry by using perfluorobutane sulfonate (PFBS). According to 3M, the results show that under federal EPA guidelines, PFBS isn’t toxic and doesn’t accumulate the way the old chemical did. It does persist in the environment, but 3M concluded that isn’t a problem if it isn’t accumulating or toxic. PFBS can enter the bloodstream of people and animals but “it’s eliminated very quickly” and does no harm at typical very low levels, said Michael Santoro, 3M’s director of Environmental Health, Safety & Regulatory Affairs.[3]

But it’s also less effective, so more of the chemical has to be used to achieve the same result.  The smaller the fluorocarbon, the more rapidly it breaks down in the environment.  Unfortunatley, the desired textile performance goes down as the size of the perfluorocarbon goes down. Now most textiles are finished with C6 chemistry, which produces a by-product called PFHA (perfluorohexanoic acid), which  is supposed to be 40 times less bioaccumulative than PFOA.  “C6 is closest chemically to C8, and it contains no PFOA. It breaks down in the environment – a positive trait – but it doesn’t stick as well to outerwear and it doesn’t repel water and oil as well as C8, which means it falls short of meeting a vague industry standard, as well as individual company standards for durability and repellency.”[4]

PFCs are available as branded products, such as Crypton Green, or generic, unbranded treatments sold through fabric finishers.   Nanotechnology is one way to increase the performance of a fabric; Nano-Tex, Nano-Sphere and GreenShield all use C6 chemistry that is engineered using nanotechnology.

An aside about Crypton Green:  Crypton Green is simply the same chemicals as are used in normal Crypton finishes, but they must be applied to what they consider “green” fiber choices:

• 50-100% recycled polyesters (with no requirement that they be certified GRS fibers)
• 100% heavy metal free polyester
• 100% wool dyed using metal free dyes
• 100% polypropylene.

Crypton Green uses an immersion bath of C6 PFCs and silver ion technology (a form of nano engineering). After heat curing, the fabrics are then coated twice with an acrylic-based backing that contains stain blockers and biocides. This is bad for human health in so many ways:

• The key ingredient of acrylic fiber is acrylonitrile, (also called vinyl cyanide). It is a carcinogen (brain, lung, bowel and breast cancers[5]) and a mutagen, targeting the central nervous system.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acrylonitrile enters our bodies through skin absorption, as well as inhalation and ingestion. 
  • Acrylic manufacturing involves highly toxic substances which require careful storage, handling, and disposal. The polymerization process can result in an explosion if not monitored properly. It also produces toxic fumes. Recent legislation requires that the polymerization process be carried out in a closed environment and that the fumes be cleaned, captured, or otherwise neutralized before discharge to the atmosphere.[6]
  • Acrylic is not easily recycled nor is it readily biodegradable. Some acrylic plastics are highly flammable and must be protected from sources of combustion.
• The CDC has concluded that there is little evidence that biocides and antimicrobials (including silver ion technology) are effective in controlling disease and infection.[7] All manufacturers claim that their antimicrobials are safe for humans – but healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente no longer specifies carpet or textiles with antimicrobials.
• The introduction of nano-engineering is a big question mark. We support the promises that nanotechnology can bring to us. And yet: The unknowns are great, and as Eric Drexler has said, the story involves a tangle of science and fiction linked with money, press coverage, Washington politics and sheer confusion.  Scientists and governments agree that the application of nanotechnology to commerce poses important potential risks to human health and the environment, and those risks are unknown. There are almost no publications on the effects of engineered nanoparticles on animals and plants in the environment. As a result of these concerns, in September, 2009,  the U.S. EPA  announced a study of the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials – a step many had been advocating for years.  And this isn’t happening any too soon:  more than 1,000 consumer products containing nanomaterials are available in the U.S. and more are added every day.

Back to our subject: The companies that make these new C6 treatments tout the safety of the new short-chain PFC, yet the Cradle to Cradle program no longer certifies any products which contain PFCs – of any number. By contrast, Chrstopher Lau, Ph.D., a leading biologist at the EPA, says ”what we’ve found is that short chains don’t have the PBT problems the longer chains have—they might be ‘P’ (persistent) but they are not ‘B’ (bioaccumulative) and definitely not ‘T’ (toxic)”. It may be too soon to write off bioaccumulation and toxicity altogether, though, according to Lau. He agrees that short-chain PFCs are not as bioaccumulative as C8s, but he cautions that there is little human data to draw other conclusions.

Given the fact that, despite industry assurances that the C6 chemistry is not toxic or bioaccumulative, it is nevertheless persistent in the environment. And given the number of times the EPA has failed to protect consumers – most recently regarding Monsanto’s Roundup (which the World Health Organization has deemed a “probable carcinogen”) – I think I’d rather err on the side of not putting a substance (such as C6 that needs more study to determine toxicity) on my sofa.

[1] http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/newscience/oncompounds/pfos/2001-04pfosproblems.htm ALSO see EPA assessment: http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/scotchgard/pdfs/226-0629.pdf#page=2

[2] https://www2.buildinggreen.com/article/chemicals-our-carpets-and-textiles

[3]Kaunig, James, et al., “Evaluation of the Chronic Toxicity and Carcinogenicity of Perfluorohexanoic Acid (PFHA) in Sprague-Dawley Rats”, Toxicologic Pathology, February 2015, vol. 43 no. 2; 209-220.

[4] PFOA Puzzle – Textile Insights — http://www.textileinsight.com/articles.php?id=37

[5] Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2010, 67:263-269 doi: 10.1136/oem.2009.049817  (abstract: http://oem.bmj.com/content/67/4/263.abstract)  SEE ALSO:  http://www.breastcancer.org/risk/new_research/20100401b.jsp AND http://www.medpagetoday.com/Oncology/BreastCancer/19321

[6] http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Acrylic-Plastic.html

[7] https://www2.buildinggreen.com/article/chemicals-our-carpets-and-textiles

We received this story from a reader, Stacey Skold, who is working on her PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Her area of study is Human Sciences. With the birth of her daughter, she learned about the impact of chemicals on children and our world generally. She subsequently applied environmental education to her studies in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design.  She will have an exhibition, “Canary Concepts and the Hidden Danger of Ubiquitous Things”  from April 11, 2016 through April 22 at the Hillestad Textiles Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.   This is in partial fulfillment of her dissertation research, “Ecological Art as a Transformative Tool in Cultilvating Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Sensitivity, and Environmentally-Responsible Behaviors.”  But let her speak for herself:

The After:

…Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here.  Chris Jordan. February, 2011

There are events in life that are transformative…

They are a select few. They separate what was before from “the after”.  They change our lives so deeply that the world after is new…

You might be wondering what this has to do with textiles… It so happens that thinking critically about fabric, the textile industry, and the world in general has become a big part of “my after”…  For many, such events might be birth, death, or marriage… Or it might be something unexpected… My After event involves my oldest daughter.

She was an early bird. That is a light-hearted way of saying she was a preemie. At thirty-four weeks, her lungs needed more time. Having a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was an intense experience; her first days of life were close to death. It changed us as did the complexity of the neonatal experience overall.

Close to her due date, we brought her home—home with a heart monitor, oxygen tank, and a lot of love—love tempered with a certain amount of anxiety about caring for our baby girl whose needs were met exclusively by equipment and a team of NICU nurses her first month of life. We never learned exactly why she was early, and over time, she still had trouble breathing. Other things were challenging such as hearing, eating, talking, digesting, growing, and even recovering from a cold… We acquired multiple doctors and diagnoses. I grew not to care about the labels as long as they got us some kind of help. But nothing really seemed to help.

Her birth was certainly a transformative life experience. But for us, it was a blood test that turned our world upside down—it began “our after”…She had a lot of them. I didn’t keep track, and she didn’t even cry anymore… As always, I squeezed her free hand, smiled, and said “you are a tough cookie”. I was proud—very proud—very very proud of her. But truth-be-told, I was equally sad. I was the one who was going to cry. And many times I did when she was sleeping. Should one so young need to be so tough?

But this blood draw was different. These tests were different…

We hit that point.

Our before was filled with questions without answers even with a multitude of doctors. The antibiotics, steroids, and bronchodilators seemed to catalyze more of the same. It is a point when people begin to consider the other biomedical doctors. Their tests were new to me. They involved my daughter’s liver enzymes, her vitamin and minerals, her methylation pathway as well as heavy metals. We soon learned that her vitamin and mineral levels were down and other levels were up… others including antimony.

I wasn’t entirely sure what it was… or why she would have it in her body. I also wondered why it was up and why her minerals would be down. She was drinking prescribed pediatric drinks packed full of vitamins and minerals, and I certainly would not feed her anything that would hurt her or allow anything dangerous in our home… or so I thought. These were questions with answers. When it came to the antimony, I remember the doctor nonchalantly saying “…oh yeah, that’s the flame retardants….”

That was IT. That was our event—and so began “our after”…. 

His words inspired a new set of questions… What possibly could be wrong with something made to protect my daughter and the rest of my family from fire? I came to learn that flame retardants (FRs) are a class of chemicals added to or bonded to materials or their surfaces to meet flammability standards and to delay the spread of fire. I also came to learn their efficacy is in question and that some are quite toxic.

This is where my story becomes a little less like a story and a little more technical for a while. But to understand why a toddler would have antimony in her body, we must consider science (and the lack of it) as well as legislation and money. I do understand if you want to skip a few paragraphs—10 to be exact. I hope I don’t lose you completely…

Back to Antimony…

So, why did she have antimony among other undesirable things in her little body… Antimony trioxide is a FR synergist with halogenated materials (Grund, 2005). This means that the antimony enhances the effect of the halogenated FRs commonly found in electronics, polyurethane foam, building insulation, wire, and cable. This also means that the antimony is the tip of the toxic iceberg…

There are multiple different FR compounds. Two major types are Organohalogenated FRs (compounds in which carbon is bonded to bromine, chlorine, or fluorine) and organophosphorous FRs (compounds in which carbon is bonded to phosphorous). These FRs are especially dangerous, as they are not chemically bonded and easily fall off the objects in the form of dust, which is easily ingested or inhaled. According to the Green Science Policy Institute, these chemicals are often toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative in our bodies and the environment. All 21 chemicals globally banned as Persistent Organic Pollutants under the Stockholm Convention are organohalogens. The health risks related to these FRs include cancer as well as impaired reproduction, fetal and child development, and neurologic and immune system function (Green Science Policy Institute, Flame Retardants, 2014). In addition, the brominated-flame retardants (BFRs) are considered endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). The endocrine system is responsible for our hormones, which are vital to all functions of life. EDCs impact our naturally-occurring hormones including estrogen, testosterone, growth hormones, insulin, and thyroid hormones in a variety of ways. This can affect our immune system, development, bonding behaviors and a wide range of other bodily functions (Landrigan & Etzel, 2014). Billions of pounds of EDCs are manufactured per year and include bisphenal A (BPA), certain pesticides, as well as the BFRs (Endocrinedxisruption.org).

These chemicals are ubiquitous, as FRs are found in a vast range of everyday objects ranging from mattresses and furniture to TVs and toys. While FRs were developed to improve safety, much scrutiny exists regarding their efficacy and health impact (Green Science Policy Institute, Flame Retardants, 2014).

We are Pre-polluted

As a result, humans are being born “pre-polluted”… Babies are not born with a clean slate… Even before birth, they are facing the challenges of modern life. In addition, to being exposed to toxins while in the womb, humans are also exposed immediately after birth in the form of breastmilk, as outlined in the Environmental Defense Study “PRE-POLLUTED: A report on the toxic substances in the umbilical cord blood of Canadian newborns” (2013). In a 1999 groundbreaking study, Swedish scientists found that women’s breast milk contained poly brominated diphenyl ether (PBDE). What is even more troubling is that while this EDC FR had been phased out, it has been doubling every five years since 1972. Even when it is no longer produced, a FR such as the PBDE, can be tenacious and impact humans, animals, and the environment decades after exposure (Meironyte, et al.,1999).

So, why is this stuff in our stuff?

FRs are not new. They have been used throughout history. The Chinese utilized vinegar and alum on wood and the Egyptians soaked grass and reeds in salt water to attempt to control fire-related disasters (Horocks, 2001). But it was the US petro-chemical revolution with the development of synthetic fibers that prompted FR legislation and their use on a wide scale. Synthetic fabrics are derived from petrochemicals, and petroleum is a fire accelerant. This change in conjunction with the increase in cigarette smoking laid the groundwork for numerous regulations and legislation mandating FRs in our products. Rather than utilizing natural fabrics, many of which are naturally flame resistant such as wool, the approach to minimizing fire-related injuries was to mandate FRs. They were required in furniture, electronics, clothing, and cars. Ironically, FRs do not necessarily slow down or prevent fires and when FR products burn the gas and smoke they produce is more toxic—especially to firefighters. This is why standards are changing and certain FRs are banned. But even when FRs are not required, they can be found in products, as the manufacturers still include them.

If FRs are so dangerous, how can they be allowed in all of our stuff?

In my before, I felt that the system and our government protected us. I thought that anything mandated on such a scale had to be safe. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Toxic Substances Control Act (ToSCA) is the 1976 United States law that sets standards for the industry and is supposed to regulate chemicals to protect us. Unfortunately, this law is ineffective and outdated. The primary problem with ToSCA is that the government has to provide actual harm in order to control or replace a dangerous chemical. This is in contrast to other countries who must demonstrate that their products are safe before they are available to the public. As a result, chemical companies have been spending an immense amount of money developing FRs that could be made cheaply while increasing their marketing and lobbying efforts related to FRs. Even when one FR such as PBDE is proven to be harmful and removed from the market, it can be replaced with chemicals that may be equally or more toxic (Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, 2014).

These hazardous and multigenerational, toxic chemicals are ubiquitous. Humans are ingesting and breathing FRs in their homes, workplaces, and cars. Even before my daughter was born, it seems they surrounded us in our newly-built home in the insulation, new couch and bed, electronics, and our dust. After she was born, there were even more. They were in her pajamas, her mattress, floor mats, and car seat. The dust from these objects lands on the floor where she crawled and on the toys she played with and mouthed. These chemicals are especially pervasive in infant and children’s products. If that weren’t enough, infants and children have a lower threshold for toxic chemicals. Fetuses, infants, and children are more susceptible to such exposures than adults.

Children are not little adults…. 

This concept is more widely acknowledged thanks to groundbreaking books such as Textbook of Children’s Environmental Health (2014). Doctor-epidemiologist authors Philip Landrigan and Ruth Etzel devote an entire chapter to children’s “exquisite vulnerability to environmental exposures”. They explain how fetuses, infants, and children have proportionately greater exposures than adults to toxic chemicals on a body-weight basis. This is for various reasons. For one, their metabolism is immature so their ability to metabolize and excrete toxic chemicals is different. In addition, infants and children spend time in different locations and are exposed to more dust and vapors near the floor. They also put their hands and other objects in their mouths more and wash their hands less (Landrigan & Etzel, 2014).

Our skin is a primary means of toxin absorption….

While most are aware of toxic exposures via digestion and the lungs, the high permeability of our skin is an under-appreciated source. Unlike toxins that enter the body via the mouth and end up in the intestines where they are transported by the blood into the liver—the body’s detoxifier, toxins absorbed via the skin bypass the liver. According to toxicology specialist, Dr. Samuel Epstein, who is cited in Killer Clothes (2011), our skin is a primary means of toxin absorption. It is more permeable than the intestines, and a child’s skin is even thinner and more permeable than an adult’s. This makes synthetic and flame retardant-fabric especially problematic for them (Clement, 2011).

Varying thresholds for toxins…

Other individual differences account for varying thresholds for toxin exposure. In addition to liver function, genetics and variations in the Methylation Cycle mean differences in susceptibility. The Methylation Cycle is a biochemical pathway that manages or contributes to a wide range of crucial bodily functions, including: immune function, maintaining DNA, energy production, mood balancing, controlling inflammation, as well as detoxification. While knowing one’s genomic profile can be empowering, realizing that FRs were just the beginning was was disheartening. We are surrounded by a multitude of harmful chemicals found in everyday things… I learned that after pumping for fourteen months, her baby bottles contained BPA (another EDC). In addition, many of the toys she played with and mouthed had BPA as well as FRs. The tubing and bags among other equipment in the NICU contained phthalates, and the recommended sanitizer contained triclosan. Unfortunately, the list goes on. These and other chemicals such as my terbutaline shots to attempt to stop early labor, my daughter’s fluoride drops, and synergistic lasix and gentamicin meds for her lungs and potential infection were all given with good intentions, but more than likely also caused harm. We truly live in a world where it has become hard to distinguish what is healthful from what is harmful. What we think is helping could be hurting… or both.

Thus began the work of the new after… 

The more I learned, the angrier I became and the more overwhelmed I felt. The FRs were everywhere, but I was not about to let these invaders continue to take over my child, my family, my home, or my life. Never underestimate the power of an angry mother—especially one with unlimited access to caffeine and the internet.

We became very conscientiousness consumers.  I learned about avoiding and removing FRs as well as other chemicals. The amount of time I spent researching and assessing objects and consequently trying to remove or mitigate what others were putting in or on products in our house was disheartening to say the least… Ultimately, many of the things we bought for our daughter ranging from pajamas to floor mats—items purchased with the intent to comfort and protect her—had great potential to contribute to her poor health and challenges. I had researched and ultimately removed most of her pajamas from our home as well as her boppy and blankets. Many such items were heartfelt-gifts from family and friends.

Building a bubble…

We changed many of her toys, bottles, clothes, bedding as well as our food, utensils, dishes, pans, soap, sanitizer, clothes, pillows, sheets, and stores. While I couldn’t rid the world of FRs and other toxic chemicals, I thought I could at least rid our house of them and create a safe bubble for my family—or at least I would try…

Shopping became less enjoyable and more stressful. I simply did not buy toys or clothing without some level of research. And rather than looking for infant child pajamas that indicated they were flame retardant, I had to look for infant and pajama labels identifying that they were not flame retardant. How ironic that one should expect neurotoxins in what they buy unless it is states otherwise.

Over time, I concluded that I simply could not keep my family in a bubble and that a bubble was inadequate anyway. I realized this as I was encasing our mattresses in 6 millimeter food-grade polyethylene sheeting (PVC-free of course). Given the high price of organic mattresses, this option is popular for health-minded consumers. Initially one might consider encasing a mattress in plastic to protect the mattress. But I encased the mattress in this non-toxic plastic to protect her from the off-gassing chemicals. Although unsustainable, the polyethylene sheeting doesn’t off-gas, and applied correctly can protect the sleeper from the toxic chemicals in the mattress. The directions even specify where to cut the holes in the bottom side so the gases can exit away from one’s face…  Exhausted, I sat on the floor staring at the mattress… The process of encasing a mattress was not for sissies,… and neither was “the after.” It was War. The idea of one’s home being a protective bubble was no more. I couldn’t keep the invisible enemies out of our house and needed a bubble in my bubble. While I couldn’t keep my family in a bubble, I was going to be happy to keep my mattress in one.

Happy is an overstatement.

Truth be told, I was sad. I had a hard time identifying it with all of the anger, but it was there. Ultimately, I realized I was grieving in the after…

I was grieving the loss of a normal birth experience, and yes a normal baby. She wasn’t what I expected… She was more. It turns out much of  “the after” has been a gift. It has made us stronger and more resilient.

I was grieving the loss of our “normal” life.  The changes one has to make in attempting to minimize exposure to harmful chemicals impacts everything and everybody. The “war on chemicals” impacted our marriage, our jobs, our time, our mental stamina, and our sleep—or lack of it.

I was grieving the loss of my old self. I was a different person in “the after”. The person people liked to talk to at cocktail parties was gone. The person who went to cocktail parties was gone. The person who people liked was gone.

Most of all, I was grieving my loss of trust—trust in products, trust in the system, and trust in the world around us.

Such is life in “the after”…

My before was very safe and filled with trust. “The after” was uncertain and full of new responsibilities. I couldn’t count on our products, our food, our clothing, or our furniture to be safe. I could only count on me, and I wasn’t sure if I was up for the challenge. I’m not sure any person is truly up to such a challenge—the challenge of discerning what is safe from what is harmful in our world with invisible pollution.

The “new normal” 

Slowly we are all healing. Our family has grown in many ways… Navigating our way through the stuff is routine in a world where health problems are the norm and chemical-free products are not. We have not accepted it, but are finding productive ways to deal with it. We celebrate changes….changes such as Technical Bulletin 117-2013 (TB 117-2013), a new standard that allows fire safety without the need for FRs. We celebrate the increase in awareness from a variety of sources including the documentary Toxic Hot Seat as well as Kaiser Permanente’s public announcement that it will stop buying furniture treated with flame retardant chemicals (Green Science Policy Institute, Furniture, 2014). We also celebrate the increase in state legislation related to toxic chemicals. As of March 2016, 24 states are considering 91 policies to protect people from toxic chemicals. 159 state policies have been adopted in 33 states. In regard to FRs, there are 18 current policies in 13 states and 30 adopted policies in 12 states (Safer States, 2016).

With such changes, I have gained more trust trust back in the world and in the integrity of our bubble. I have become increasingly satisfied with minimizing our exposure and with doing my best. This is the gift of “the after”… a renewed confidence and understanding about our world and our selves with a new passion to protect them both.

We also celebrate each success with our daughter. She continues to be a tough cookie during those blood tests in “the after.” The results have enabled us to help her more effectively. With many changes and interventions her vitamins and minerals are up and so is her weight. She is healthier and happier than she has ever been. While we may never know to what degree the antimony and other chemical exposures played a role in her challenges, it has become clear that such chemicals are harmful to humans, wildlife, and our planet.

Like Chris Jordan’s albatross birds who eat and feed plastic pollution to their young, my daughter was polluted albeit invisible to the naked eye. His tragic birds and my early bird showed me what I knew in my before, but didn’t see until “our after.”

It got personal…

In The Failure of Environmental Education and How We Can Fix It (2011), authors Saylan and Blumstein point out that learning about our environmental problems hasn’t been enough to change our behaviors. People need relevance… the world’s problems need to become personal.

In my before I heard about toxins and knew there were concerns for humans and the environment. But for me, and I suspect others, even after reading it, hearing it, and knowing it, it couldn’t have become real until that transformative event—that blood test. The number on the paper was a physical manifestation of the invisible pollution. It became all too real and impossible to ignore or to think about at a later date. It is very real in “our after.”

The problem got personal for me, for many others before me, and is going to get personal for many others in the future. They too will change. There will be greater environmental sensitivity and more responsible behaviors. But for how many, how much, and how soon? To change our system and revise ToSCA, environmentalism needs to transcend what is considered a political concern to be a human health concern. To more effectively address what many consider “environmental” issues, perhaps we need a more human-centered focus.

We have been talking about saving the planet for a long time. But it may be in our best interest and our planets’ best interest to talk about saving ourselves—not to mention our children. In doing so, more will understand that the problems in our environment are intertwined with human health. When we are getting sick so is our wildlife, and so is our planet and so are our resources… And slowly we will heal—we have to… the human race depends upon it.

We are trying to give our children the tools to live in “the after.” In The Green Boat, Mary Pipher writes  “…If we don’t sail carefully and tend to those on board, we will perish. If we manage to keep our boat afloat, our world can sail on, not as it is today, but in a more joyous, peaceful, and beautiful way….” (2013). It is my hope we are fixing it enough for them—and even more for their children. I long for a world more beautiful than my before and “my after”—a world with fewer and safer chemicals, better legislation, and a whole lot more trust. That is a beautiful world.

After Words

Thank you O Ecotextiles and Two Sisters Ecotextiles for giving me a reason to write my story. But more importantly, thank you for being a part of “our after” providing us with exquisite fabrics we can trust.

References

Clement, Anna Maria & Brian R. (2011). Killer Clothes: How Seemingly Innocent Clothing Choices Endanger Your Health… And How to Protect Yourself! Summertown, TN: Hippocrates Publications.

The Endocrine Disruption Exchange. Prenatal Origins of Endocrine Disruption: Critical Windows of Development. Retrieved from http://endocrinedisruption.org/prenatal-origins-of-endocrine-disruption/critical-windows-of-development/chemicals-in-the-timeline/bisphenol-a

Environmental Defense. (2013, June). Pre-Polluted: A Report on Toxic Substances in the Umbilical Cord of Canadian Newborns. Retrieved from http://environmentaldefence.ca/prepolluted

Green Science Policy Institute. Flame Retardants. Retrieved from http://greensciencepolicy.org/topics/flame-retardants/

Green Science Policy Institute. Furniture. Retrieved from http://greensciencepolicy.org/topics/furniture/

Green Science Policy Institute. San Antonio Statement. Retrieved from http://greensciencepolicy.org/?s=san+antonio

Grund, S. C.; Hanusch, K.; Breunig, H. J. & Wolf, H. U. (2005). Antimony and Antimony Compounds, Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Horocks, A. & Price, D. (Eds.) (2001).Fire Retardant Materials. Boca Raton, FL: Woodhead Publishing Ltd.

Landrigan, P. & Etzel, R. (Eds.) (2014). Textbook of Children’s Environmental Health. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Meironyte, et al., (1999) Analysis of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Swedish Human Milk: A Time-Related Trend Study, 1972-1997. Journal of Toxicological Environmental Health, 58, 329-341.

MTHFR.net. Retrieved from http://mthfr.net/mthfr-research/2012/01/27/

Peeples, L. (2014, June 3). Kaiser Permanente Pledges To Stop Buying Flame-Retardant Furniture. Huffington Post. Retrieved from

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/03/kaiser-permanente-flame-retardant-furniture_n_5441011.html

Pipher, M. (2013). The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. What is TSCA? Retrieved from http://saferchemicals.org/get-the-facts/what-is-tsca/

Safer States. Bill Tracker. Retrieved from http://www.saferstates.org/bill-tracker/

Saylan, C. & Blumstein, D. (2011). The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Stockholm Convention. Retrieved from http://chm.pops.int/Countries/StatusofRatifications/PartiesandSignatories/tabid/252/Default.aspx

In October, 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) raised the alarm about the terrible plight facing the Earth’s coral reefs. For the third time in history, the world is in the midst of a global coral bleaching event.[1]   Coral bleaching is triggered by stresses on coral reefs. During bleaching, the coral expel the algae that live within them, exposing the coral’s white skeleton. The symbiotic algae not only provide coral with its color, they also provide crucial nutrients. Without them, the coral eventually will starve.

“The coral bleaching and disease, brought on by climate change and coupled with events like the current El Niño, are the largest and most pervasive threats to coral reefs around the world,” said Mark Eakin, NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator. “As a result, we are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally. What really has us concerned is this event has been going on for more than a year and our preliminary model projections indicate it’s likely to last well into 2016.”

The difference between the third coral bleaching event and the previous two is that the current study points to pollution as one of the sources that is undermining the health of the coral, making it unable to resist bleaching or recover from the effects.

Why the concern about coral reefs? Aren’t they just pretty playfields?

“Coral reefs are the litmus test of our oceans, a visual representation of the health of our seas,” said CNN anchor and meteorologist Derek Van Dam. “When coral becomes bleached or white in color, this sensitive ecosystem is negatively impacted, which creates a profound ripple effect on the world’s food chain.”[2] Think of coral reefs as being the underwater equivalent of rainforests – they are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other marine environment, including about 4,000 species of fish, 800 species of hard corals and hundreds of other species. Scientists estimate that there may be another 1 to 8 million undiscovered species of organisms living in and around reefs. This biodiversity is “considered key to finding new medicines for the 21st century,” NOAA said. “Many drugs are now being developed from coral reef animals and plants as possible cures for cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, viruses and other diseases.”

Storehouses of immense biological wealth, reefs also provide economic and environmental services to millions of people. Coral reefs may provide goods and services worth $375 billion each year. This is an amazing figure for an environment that covers less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface

Coral reefs also act as a buffer to adjacent shorelines from wave action and prevent erosion, property damage and loss of life. Reefs also protect the highly productive wetlands along the coast, as well as ports and harbors and the economies they support. Globally, half a billion people are estimated to live within 100 kilometers of a coral reef and benefit from its production and protection.

A new study published October 20, 2015 [3] brought the bad news about pollution and the world’s dying corals. According to researchers the oft-overlooked threat to reefs worldwide is sunscreen – specifically sunscreen which contains oxybenzone.

Scientists who conducted their research in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands found that the chemical oxybenzone — used in more than 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide, including those by popular brands such as Coppertone, L’Oreal Paris, Hawaiian Tropic and Banana Boat — was extremely harmful to fragile coral reefs. There are alternative sunscreens with no oxybenzone provided by the non-profit Enironmental Working Group (click here for the EWG list) http://www.ewg.org/search/site/sunscreen

The researchers said even a tiny amount of oxybenzone-containing sunscreen can damage corals. As The Washington Post noted, “the equivalent of a drop of water in a half-dozen Olympic sized swimming pools”[4] was sufficient to cause harm. Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands found concentrations ranging fro 800 parts per trillion up to 1.4 parts per million,” according to the autors of the NOAA study. That’s 12 times the concentrations needed to harm coral. Adverse effects on coral started with concentrations as low as 62 parts per trillion.

John Fauth, an associate professor of biology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, said that “another way (oxybenzone sunscreen) gets into the environment is through wastewater streams. People come inside and step into the shower. People forget it goes somewhere.” Cities such as Ocean City, Maryland and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, have built sewer outfalls that jettison tainted wastewater away from public beaches, sending personal care products with a cocktail of chemicals into the ocean. On top of that, sewer overflows during heavy rains spew millions of tons of waste mixed with stormwater into rivers and streams. Like sunscreen lotions, products like birth-control pills contain chemicals that are endocrine disruptors and alter the way organisims grow. Endocrine disruptors are amont the main suspects in an investigation into why mail fish such as bass are developing female organs.[5]

So I’m quite excited that this blog post has something – something – proactive that you can do, and that is to use “reef-friendly” sunscreen which uses titanium oxide or zinc oxide instead of oxybenzone. Some tourist destinations have even instituted sunscreen rules to protect their reefs. In Akumal, Mexico, for instance, visitors are urged to apply eco-friendly sunscreen.

“We have lost at least 80 percent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean,” Craig Downs, lead author of the study said. “Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers.”

[1] http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/100815-noaa-declares-third-ever-global-coral-bleaching-event.html

[2] Dunnakey, Adam, “Coral reefs endangered by bleaching in global event, researchers say”, CNN, October 8, 2015

[3] Downs, Craig, et al; “Toxicopathological effects of the sunscreen UV filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3) on coral planulae and cultured primary cells”, Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, 20 October 2015

[4] Fears, Darryl, “How we are all contributing to the destruction of coral reefs: Sunscreen”, The Washington Post, October 20, 2015

[5] Fears, op. cit.