The goal of the "I am Not a Guinea Pig" campaign is to engage Americans across the country to push for substantive reform of our toxic chemicals law.
For the first time in over 30 years, revisions to this law—the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA)—are currently being debated by Congress. TSCA is considered among the weakest of all major U.S. environmental laws. In fact, the law is so weak that EPA was unable to use the law to ban asbestos, a known human carcinogen barred in more than 30 countries.
On July 22, 2010, the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 (H.R. 5820) was introduced in the House, calling for a comprehensive overhaul of TSCA. It improves upon its companion bill in the Senate, the Safer Chemicals Act (S. 3209), introduced in April of 2010.
To encourage support for this strong bill, Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDAF), the lobbying wing of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), has joined with other members of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition that EDF helped found that includes over 200 health and environmental groups representing 11 million people across the nation. Key coalition partners in our campaign include:
- Autism Society
- Health Care Without Harm
- Learning Disabilities Association of America
- Moms Rising
- Reproductive Health Technology Project
- Teens Turning Green
"I am Not A Guinea Pig" was created by EDAF and supports the efforts of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition to enact an effective chemical safety law.