Groups seek ban on cleaning chemicals

The products, used in detergents, are linked to gender changes in fish.
By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer
June 6, 2007

Five environmental groups and a labor union Tuesday petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restrict the use of chemicals that are in many household detergents and have been linked to gender changes in fish and other aquatic life.

Led by the Sierra Club, the groups are seeking a ban on nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylates in consumer and industrial detergents and other cleaning products. About 400 million pounds of the chemicals are produced each year in the United States, and much of it is flushed into sewers that empty into rivers and other waterways.

Under the Toxic Substances Control Act enacted 31 years ago, citizens have the authority to petition the EPA to regulate individual substances. However, it is a power that has been rarely invoked.

Federal documents show that eight other petitions have been filed in the last dozen years. The EPA denied the requests. However, the most recent one led to a lawsuit and an agreement by the EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to regulate lead in children's jewelry.

The new petition is the first involving an endocrine-disrupting chemical, a phenomenon discovered by scientists in the early 1990s in which artificial compounds mimic estrogen or other hormones. The EPA is developing methods to screen chemicals for hormonal activity but currently does not check for such risks when setting environmental standards.

Nonylphenol imitates estrogen, and male rainbow trout and other fish exposed to the chemical in laboratories become part male and part female, producing female egg proteins, according to EPA documents and several scientific studies.
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