This week, organizations and individuals around the country are coming together to tell Walgreen’s—the largest drug retailing company in the United States—to eliminate products containing toxic chemicals from their shelves. Led by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition (of which IATP is a part), the July 17 “Instagram Day of Action” is asking the company to join the Mind the Store campaign and, by doing so, agree to create an action plan to reduce and eliminate the Hazardous 100+ toxic chemicals from their supply chain. Customers will share their messages with Walgreen’s via social media to create a less toxic world.
Fantastic, right? But what do the shelves of Walgreen’s have to do with food and agriculture? Answer: Eliminating toxic chemicals from consumer products, such as phthalates in children’s toys, reduces the amount of toxic chemicals that enter our agricultural system and, thus, the food that ends up on our dinner plates.
Despite the fact that organic food sales in the United States have increased from $11 billion on 2004 to an estimated $27 billion in 2013, consumers—particularly low income communities—are still exposed to a variety of toxic chemicals through their food. While the direct use of agricultural chemicals and food additives pose known threats to human health, certain toxins, such as those on the Hazardous 100+ list, find their way to our plate in indirect ways.
A majority of organic and non-organic foods—regardless of the chemicals used in the production of their single or multiple ingredients—are processed, transported and distributed through system filled with hazardous chemicals that pay little heed to the boundaries between industrial and agricultural systems, let alone organic standards. Despite consumer information and limited government action to eliminate points of direct exposure to such chemicals, researchers are finding that the levels of indirect exposure to toxins through the food chain have not significantly decreased.
Last week, the Washington Post published an article on the findings of a team of researchers studying phthalates in a variety of diets, including infants. Phthalates, according to the Mind the Store campaign, are chemicals linked to low testosterone, birth defects and cancer that are used to soften vinyl plastic and can be found in products like school supplies and flooring. The article notes that the “study shows that an infant with a typical diet is still consuming twice as much of the chemicals as the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.” Meat and dairy and other foods that have higher levels of fat accumulate higher levels of the bioaccumulative chemical.
These findings reinforce the fact that addressing toxic chemicals in the food chain—itself a complex set of relationships - must be done holistically to mitigate both direct and indirect exposure, rather than linear approaches that simply focus on direct exposure. Phthalates were banned in certain consumer products, particularly children’s products, when Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). This measure broadly banned the chemical from children’s toys that can be placed in the mouth and other products with high concentrations of the chemical.
However, Congress failed to take action on the presence of phthalates in broader ecosystems that support agricultural production, nor the products that are part of the associated food system. Given their tendency to bioaccumulate in fat, it’s not a surprise that the phthalates present in chicken feed, plastic tubing used in dairy operations and food packaging result in high phthalate exposure, even for infants wielding phthalate free toys. These indirect exposures require a more comprehensive management plan.
Phthalates are just one of the Hazardous 100+ toxic chemicals targeted by the Mind the Store campaign and this week’s push to have Walgreen’s remove these chemicals from their shelves is a fight that the food and agriculture community must show up for. By achieving this and other similar efforts in agriculture and food system, all people are less likely to have toxic chemicals as part of the dinner menu.
To sign the petition for Walgreen’s to join the Mind the Store Campaign, visit: http://saferchemicals.org/2013/05/14/why-are-we-asking-retailers-to-mind-the-store/. You can share your thoughts with Walgreen’s on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Walgreens), Twitter (@Walgreens) and Instagram (http://instagram.com/walgreens).
