Tens of thousands of chemicals are used to create our everyday products, and the legislation that regulates them hasn’t been updated for nearly half a decade–but that all changed today. President Obama signed into law Wednesday new regulations that will overhaul toxic chemical use and garnered unexpected bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats and environmentalists and the chemical industry.

It has been a long journey but today @POTUS has officially signed #TSCA into law! pic.twitter.com/jCNuVVH4Ll

— Senator Tom Carper (@SenatorCarper) June 22, 2016

The new law is an update of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and will now allow the Environmental Protection agency to collect more information about a chemical before it can be used in the United States. Also under the new law, the EPA must conduct a review of all the chemicals currently on the market and make the results public. The EPA will also have to consider the chemical effects on certain demographics like infants, pregnant women, and the elderly.

“This is a big deal. This is a good law. It’s an important law,” Obama said at the bill-signing ceremony at the White House. “Here in America, folks should have the confidence to know the laundry detergent we buy isn’t going to make us sick, [or] the mattress that our babies sleep on aren’t going to harm them.”

The law will also streamline the different states’ rules on regulating the $800 billion industry. Three years of negotiating between lawmakers went into creating this law which aims to “bring chemical regulation into the 21st century,” according to the American Chemistry Council, who backed the bill.

“I want the American people to know that this is proof that even in the current polarized political climate here in Washington, things can work — it’s possible,” Obama said. “If we can get this bill done it means that somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well.”

In recent years, Republicans have been critical of Obama’s efforts to strengthen environmental and climate protections, claiming regulations create unnecessary burdens and stifles business. However, all parties were on board for this bill–it passed in the House with a 403-12 vote.

“That doesn’t happen very often these days,” Obama said. “So this is a really significant piece of business.”

The Environmental Defense Fund called it “the most important new environmental law in decades.” However, as with any law, there are some downsides. The law restricts how and when a state can regulate certain chemicals and limits the EPA’s ability to monitor some imported chemicals. The Environmental Working Group, another organization that supported the bill, criticized that the EPA may not have enough resources or legal authority to review and/or ban chemicals, citing that House Republicans slashed the EPA’s funding and staff in an appropriations bill for next year.

But, on the bright side, the approximate 700 new chemicals that come on the market each year will now have to clear a safety bar first and companies can no longer classify health studies of those chemicals as “confidential business information.” Those studies now must be made available to the public.

The law was named the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, after the late New Jersey Democrat who spent years trying to fix the law. His wife attended the signing at the White House.

Inez Nicholson

Inez is an editorial intern at Law Street from Raleigh, NC. She will be a junior at North Carolina State University and is studying political science and communication media. When she’s not in the newsroom, you can find her in the weight room. Contact Inez at INicholson@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The entire environmental movement can be partly attributed to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring.” Her revelatory research shocked the world in its vivid and ominous accounts of the agriculture industry and the use of pesticides–DDT in particular. The damage to the environment and human health that these things may induce terrified readers and rallied a series of organized movements to raise awareness, address these concerns, and campaign for improvements in these sectors. But toxins and threats to our health endure, and in many other forms.

While DDT itself is now rare in 2015, there is a plethora of pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that are sprayed on crops in abundance. This series of practices has contributed in part to recent movements in favor of more organic foods, grass-fed beef, locally raised products, composting and rooftop gardens, and other methods that speak to a decentralized, localized, and more natural approach to food production. Another potential means of addressing the need to grow crops while pressed to not use so many chemicals is by making changes to the DNA of the plant. For example, a strain of corn might have a gene introduced that makes it immune to a particular disease or attack by certain insects. Yet even in this arena, there is debate as to the healthfulness and safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Food itself is not necessarily the primary source of toxins in the food industry or elsewhere in our day-to-day lives. Recent questions have been raised about poly- and perfluoralkyl substances, or PFASs. These things do manifest themselves in the food industry, mainly as non-stick coatings as can be found in pizza boxes and teflon cookware. Fortunately, the latter product is on the decline. Yet PFASs are also used in carpeting, electronics, sleeping bags, footwear, and a massive assortment of very common products. You can see a more thorough list here.

This line of chemicals is important to making these products durable and useful over a long span of time. But it begs the question: must it necessarily be these chemicals in order to make these products viable? On the other hand, the health concerns are very recent and require much more research in order to determine the degree of their toxicity. Many questions are still up in the air. In the meantime though, some people question their continued use while the thorough answers are sought, considering that doubt has now been cast on them.

Some Studies suggest that these chemicals may linger in the bloodstream and contribute to the development of thyroid disease and kidney cancer. A doctor involved in this study explained that, considering some of these chemicals are related to others that are known to be carcinogenic, one must prove that they are safe before using them. Rather, we have already made the error of implementing them before we had enough information. In this sense, “innocent until proven guilty” does not apply; the product should be absolutely safe before it is used. While studies continue, experts suggest people try to avoid PFASs when possible. But considering how prevalent they are in the market, this is an immense challenge.

The food and consumer sector is not the only source of widespread and unavoidable contaminants. During the course of the several thousand nuclear bomb tests on the planet, particularly in the early stages of the Cold War, a heavily radioactive isotope called Strontium 90 was released in massive quantities. It seeped into the water, soil, and plants, and subsequently found its way into the bodies of human beings. There was so much of it released, it is widely argued that now there is a degree of Strontium 90 embedded in the bones of every human being on Earth, even the ones born long after the spike in nuclear testing ceased. Strontium 90 has been linked to various forms of cancer and leukemia. It is as if to say we have permanently poisoned ourselves and there is nothing we can do to remedy it.

While some of these issues are quite ominous because we are relatively helpless, hopefully some of the other toxic and unhealthy products and chemicals can be swapped for safer alternatives.

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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