(New York, NY, Wednesday, December 12, 2018) – The vast majority of the roughly 80,000 chemicals available for use have never been tested for potential threats to people or the planet. Most people don’t realize that the chemicals in our products are not proven to be safe.

Retailers are beginning to pay attention, reformulating tens of billions of dollars of products. Walmart has led to a reduction of 23.8 million pounds of toxic chemicals. Walmart was the first major global retailer to make a safer chemicals commitment of that scale —and has since stimulated a domino effect of other retailers following suit. Walmart collaborated with the Environmental Defense Fund in this effort.

Environmental Defense Fund’s Behind the Label initiative offers resources that make it easier for companies to develop safer products for consumers.

Women use over twice as many personal care products as men each day – and we still don’t know what this means for our health.

U.S. laws are outdated and the current administration is failing to implement key provisions of the recent safer chemicals legislation. Consumers can find better products through Safer Choice, EWG and Cradle to Cradle certifications. However, we have a long way to go. Products contain contaminants that seep chemicals from packaging and processing. Exposures to daily chemicals can have harmful impacts on our health – associated with cancer, infertility and developmental disorders.

Thousands of household goods contain chemicals linked to serious health problems. Ms. Brown-West can talk about how there are over 80,000 chemicals in products that we use every day. New biomonitoring and exposure data are enabling consumers to be more informed than ever before on harmful chemicals in products. Companies and consumers can design safer products to protect consumers and improve the bottom line.