Massive corporate coverup? you decide.

FOR HIRE: Child Poisoner!

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Toxic Waste Dumper

WANTED IMMEDIATE OPENING: Landfill Abuser

MULTIPLE POSITIONS AVAILABLE: Disease Spreader, Agent of Illness

You have probably never seen job postings like the ones above. What awful jobs! Who would even want them? The terrible social stigma of accepting such a position would likely scare good law abiding folk to death. Even an evil person that might seek out the job of “Toxic Waste Dumper” would hide it, and/or want huge sums of payment to compensate their wrecked consciences.

But what if I were to tell you there are many people filling all of these roles today? What if millions of people were being fooled into accepting these positions unwillingly? What if major corporations in America have found a legal way to offload these responsibilities to people all over the country?

Every day these unwitting agents dispose of toxic materials in their own communities, their own homes and workplaces. These legally duped people poison themselves, their families, and their co-workers, most of whom are also taken up in this complicated scheme of environmentally disastrous chicanery. And they are not paid huge conscience soothing salaries to do so.

If fact, they do it because they have been deceived and brainwashed. These huge corporations spend billions of dollars each year to recruit new agents to this program, to increase the rate at which these materials are distributed and disposed, to continue the propaganda that allows these programs of environmental destruction to continue unabated. Plainly speaking, this is a profit center for these immense companies! They make billions of dollars from the very people who are absorbing their toxins, distributing the corporate waste, consuming their poisons and filling local landfills with non-biodegradable waste collected from around the globe.

So… why? How can this be legal, the reader should be asking themselves? How can companies profit from such a massive national campaign of toxicity and mayhem?

The simple fact is that these companies are not dodging laws, not breaking laws, not doing anything illegal whatsoever. In fact the “unwitting agents” are nothing of the sort.

These people are conscious and purposeful consumers of products from major international corporations like Johnson and Johnson, Proctor and Gamble, Lever Brothers, a large number of cosmetics companies and a massive cast of others. The toxins? Just ingredients as far as the law is concerned.

The current legislation that protects customers and consumers of these products is almost non-existent. There are over 80,000 chemicals and compounds being utilized in personal care, cleaning and cosmetics products we as Americans consume, and fewer than 20% of them have ever been tested for safety. Some of them are known carcinogens, reproductive or neuro-toxins, or linked to respiratory diseases like asthma, yet since they don’t have to prove they are safe, we the American people are the test monkeys. Current law requires that chemicals be proven to be unsafe before they are legally restricted, and the burden of that proof lies on the FDA and EPA and the public.
With hazardous chemicals, it should be guilty until proven safe, not the other way around. And to be perfectly frank part of the responsibility for this problem lies firmly on our own shoulders. We need to act more carefully, and choose to purchase our products from companies with a proven track record of environmental stewardship and corporate responsibility. Know what the ingredients in your products are, and what they are doing to you and your families. Often ingredients will be listed under a “trade name”, which is just another name for a harmful ingredient that you may not immediately recognize. For example, the chemical formaldehyde is sold under at least 30 different trade names, and is a VERY common ingredient in shampoos, conditioners, lotions and even BABY products. Yet formaldehyde has been shown to be a carcinogen. A carcinogen in products targeted for babies? You better believe it.

Don’t fall for advertising claims whose sole purpose is to make you buy their product. Even products that are supposedly “green” or “natural” or “organic” may not be! Those words have no legal binding on a product label, unless they are backed by a known and scientifically proven claim.

Often “Green” products, (sometimes even accurately labeled ones!) are produced by a different division in that same huge corporation that is harming the environment with their old product line. Don’t give your support to a company that sells safe and unsafe products of the same type. Buy from companies that specialize and only sell safe products produced sustainably and with environmental impacts in mind.


And now to promote a few great sites and initiatives.

First, the Safe Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition(permanent link on the right). Recently they have been joined by Jessica Alba as they champion the cause of safer chemicals and product safety. They are promoting the 2011 Safer Chemicals Act, which seeks to bring stronger legislation in place to protect consumers from known harmful chemicals and enforce testing requirements on current and future chemicals and compounds used in our products.

Next, The Story of Stuff(see links on the right). This site has a series of short films about the consumer product lifecycle, and how “stuff” is made, consumed and disposed of. I especially recommend the films “The Story of Stuff” and “The Story of Cosmetics” for product safety information. There is now a book by the same name, which goes to a greater depth of detail about the materials and manufacturing product lifecycle from raw materials to the dump.