Flaw #1: Most chemicals are not required to be adequately tested for safety before use.

Most chemicals and technologies are treated as if they were safe until proven otherwise.

While the Federal government requires that drugs be thoroughly tested before they are marketed, the government historically has allowed chemicals that can have equally powerful impacts on our health to be used in everyday products and released into our air and water.

Thousands of chemicals are licensed for use in commerce today. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that fewer than 10% of chemicals produced in the largest quantities (over one million pounds per year) have undergone even a limited set of tests to assess their health effects on humans. Most tests look only for acute toxicity or cancer-causing properties. Potential harm to a child's nervous system is rarely investigated. Little to nothing is known about what happens when people and ecosystems are repeatedly exposed to more than one chemical at a time.

Yet recent tests by the U.S. government have found hundreds of chemicals in the blood and urine of Americans.

Many of these chemicals go into products we use everyday. While the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission frequently takes action to prevent safety hazards in products, chemical toxicity hazards to consumers are far less regulated. No pre-market safety testing or approval has been required under any federal law for chemicals in cosmetics, toys, clothing, carpets or construction materials, to name just a few obvious sources of chemical exposure in everyday life. Products like hair spray, hair dye, pacifiers, stain repellants, glues, and children's toys have been put on the market, only to be found, after decades of widespread use, to contain toxic compounds at unsafe levels.