This test shows what can happen to almost every piece of children’s clothing sold in America.
At least one child dies every day of fabric related burns.
In 1973, the federal government began requiring children’s pajamas to be fire safe.
And the most widely used flame retardant was Tris.
Millions of mothers have put their babies to bed in Tris treated nightclothes.
But this was the 1970s, a period of growing concern about the environment.
Focus shifted from fire to Tris itself.
Scientists fear Tris may cause cancer - thousands of cases among children.
I don't want my children sleeping in it and I don't want other people's children sleeping in it,
bathed in a chemical that's gonna cause cancer.
What does the Tris story reveal about how chemicals are regulated?
And nearly 40 years later, what do we really know about the flame retardants in our everyday products?
Your average citizen probably does believe that the federal government is testing chemicals
before they come into the marketplace. But nobody is really looking after us.
I woke up that morning to the sight of our son burning like a Christmas tree on fire.
His son Jimmy may never lead a normal life because his pajamas did burn.
Doctors and safety experts say the best answer to cases like Jimmy's is to make clothing that won't burn.
Makers of sleepwear for children up to the age of 6 were given until the end of July 1973
to make their product flameproof.
To comply with the new rule, pajama makers turned to a flame retardant: brominated Tris.
It was a very, very useful product that allowed the manufacturers to meet this flammability standard.
A fabric treated with a flame resistant process did not burn, even with a torch.
But public attitudes about chemicals were changing. New agencies like the EPA
and the Consumer Product Safety Commission were created to protect the public from harm.
There was a chemo-phobia, there was a lot of concern about what are we being exposed to?
One scientist asking those questions was Arlene Blum. She worked with Bruce Ames,
developer of a
It’s called the Ames test.
You could take a chemical and if it changed the DNA of bacteria, it was likely to cause cancer.
They tested Tris and in January 1977, published the results.
We recommended that the main flame retardant in children’s pajamas was a mutagen,
changed DNA, might be cancer causing, and should not be used.
The Ames Article came out of nowhere. I mean, how could you develop this test using bacteria
that’s going to predict causing cancer in humans?
Did it trouble you that the children of this country might have tumors, carcinogenic
or otherwise, produced by the chemical that was being used in all of their sleepwear?
We questioned the test result that Tris could possibly cause tumors.
We commissioned a series of tests to be run. Some of the additional testing indicated that
it was a mutagen but it wasn’t across the board. So we recognized we had a problem.
They tried to find out, was the benefit from Tris worth the risk?
If it had saved thousands of lives, that would perhaps have been more of a mitigating factor.
You’d get anecdotal data, but nothing that you could really rely on.
And that was - that was very, very disappointing.
A mutagen doesn’t always cause cancer. But within months,
a study from the National Cancer Institute found Tris did cause cancer in laboratory animals.
The government ruled today that no more children's sleepwear containing a chemical called Tris
may be made or sold.
Pajama makers, left with millions of dollars of useless garments, sued the government.
The government's attempt to ban Tris, the fabric flame retardant suspected of causing cancer
has been overturned.
Even though the ban was overturned, brominated Tris was never used in pajamas again.
It was replaced with a similar chemical: chlorinated Tris.
And we ran more mutagenicity tests and chlorinated Tris also was a mutagen, it also changed DNA.
This time, the government did not try for a ban.
Instead, chlorinated Tris was voluntarily removed from children's pajamas.
Arlene Blum didn’t think about cholorinated Tris again for more than two decades, until,
in 2006, a furniture maker asked her advice about flame retardants.
And he said, “we have this flame retardant Tris and we’ve been assured that it’s fine.
But, you know, we’re a little curious to know more about it, can you help me?”
And I said, “Tris? Oh, my goodness, that’s what we got out of kid’s pajamas."
California, in effect, required the use of all these chemicals to keep the furniture safe.
Back in 1975, California Governor Jerry Brown enacted a fire safety standard for upholstered furniture
It was called TB-117 and to meet it, manufacturers put flame retardants,
including Tris and others, in couches and cushions.
Upholstered furniture burns fast.
Because of the size of California's marketplace, it became the de facto fire safety standard
across the country and, in fact, in many other countries.
And because many baby products are considered furniture under California law,
flame retardants started showing up in unlikely places.
They may be plush and soft to the touch but there could be something sinister lurking in your baby products.
The same chemicals, which we took out of children's sleepwear were now in their pillows
and their blankets and their cribs and their bassinets and their strollers.
Of the 101 products tested, 36 had chlorinated Tris.
And, scientists discovered, for years flame retardants had been leaching out of products
and into the environment, building up in rivers, polar bears, house dust, and even human breast milk.
We didn’t think that, oh, these weren’t going to stay put in the product.
We thought if they were in a nice cushion that they’d stay there.
Linda Birnbaum is the government’s top toxicologist. In 2001, she became alarmed
by studies showing neurological effects on animals exposed to a group of flame retardants called PBDE’s.
Baby mice were treated with these chemicals and showed effects on their learning
and their memory and their movement.
The dust in her house contained trace amounts of a potentially dangerous chemical compound.
Over the last 12 to 13 years there has been a great deal of information,
which raised the level of concern that I have for at least some of the flame retardants.
Recent studies involve babies, who absorb flame retardants from house dust,
and children exposed before birth.
Some of the effects that we’re seeing are effects on the developing nervous system.
We’re seeing effects on the developing reproductive system. In a population of children that have
been exposed to the flame retardants, those children have lower IQ, more difficulty in learning.
We know these toxic halogenated flame retardants are linked to cancer and infertility.
Worried about possible health effects,
California assemblyman Mark Leno introduced legislation to change the fire standard.
He even got support from the state’s fire fighters, who believe flame retardants don’t work,
and give off dangerous toxic fumes when they burn.
But there was strong opposition from the flame retardant industry, which lobbied hard to
keep TB 117, and from a group called Citizens for Fire Safety.
Flame retardants have been proven to increase the time that people have to get out of a fire.
The message was, call your legislator to vote against Assemblyman Leno's bill,
or your family will die in a fire.
Over these past eight years or so, we've introduced probably five different legislative efforts.
None of them got to the Governor's desk because of the intensity of the lobbying.
But in May 2012, the Chicago Tribune exposed the industry’s use of questionable
science in its claims about flame retardants’ effectiveness.
You know, it’s one thing to have some health risks if you're getting this huge fire safety benefit.
But I think when it comes to furniture, what we found was they don't work as promised.
The reporters also documented that Citizens for Fire Safety was a front group
for the three largest makers of flame retardant chemicals.
Albermarle, Chemtura, and ICL Industrial Products.
Within weeks of publication, newly reelected California Governor Jerry Brown ordered that
the standard he put in place nearly 40 years before be revised to reduce the use of toxic
flame retardants. He spoke about it in the documentary, “Toxic Hot Seat.”
When the science reaches a point where, wow, that’s not good,
and it’s peer reviewed and we know it, then we take action.
This time it took eight years, not three months. But our flammability standard changed in California.
With California’s new standard, furniture is now less likely to contain flame retardants.
And while no flame retardant has ever been banned by the federal government, a few, including PBDE’s,
have been voluntarily phased out of production when shown to be potentially dangerous.
The American Chemistry Council, which speaks for the industry, says today’s products are safe.
Most of the information on the potential toxicity of flame retardants is based on those products
that are no longer on the market. If you look at the products that are currently available
today, there is not a scientific consensus that there is an impact on human health at
the levels that we encounter in homes.
There are upwards of 80,000 untested chemicals in our daily life.
In fact, there are no specific tests required before a new chemical is put on the market.
And very few chemicals are ever tested by government scientists.
There are chemicals that are safe, there are chemicals that are unsafe.
We won't know the difference between them, though, because they've not been sufficiently tested.
The industry is confident flame retardants save lives.
The number of reported home fires has dropped by 50% since these products were introduced to the market.
Flame retardants delay the start of a fire, you know, by half a minute or longer.
But other things have changed to make us safer from fire.
There are fewer smokers, more smoke detectors, and self-extinguishing cigarettes.
It’s very difficult to come up with a-a you know, a concrete answer to the question
of how many lives did flame retardants save. We know they save lives.
Do you think that the addition of flame retardants in furniture foam has provided Americans with
any safe significant protection from household fires?
Our tests that we conducted on foam that was treated with FR chemicals,
and foam that was not, showed that there was no difference in terms of retarding the flame.
Do we need it? Does the addition of this chemical really provide safety?
Are there other ways that we could provide for safety without adding chemicals
maybe for which we have very limited information?
Over the years, Congress has tried unsuccessfully to overhaul the chemical safety system.
Now, a new effort is underway to give the government more power to regulate dangerous chemicals.
I believe we have the opportunity to actually reform a law and improve lives and save lives.
And, nearly forty years after it was pulled from children’s pajamas, chlorinated Tris
is being voluntarily phased out of other consumer products.
For things to be removed from the markets, it often takes the marketplace to speak.