A couple of state bills would prohibit businesses from producing a chemical commonly used in upholstery, appliances and plastics.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are useful as a flame retardant. Primary sponsor of the bills, Rep. Chris Kolb, said the chemicals present health and environmental risks similar to PCBs, which were banned in the 1970s.
“They have been linked to their sister compounds, PCBs,” the Ann Arbor Democrat said. “They’ve also been shown to cause cancer growth and development.”
The European Union voted in September to ban the compounds and Kolb said the concentration of the chemicals in the U.S. population is higher than in other countries.
If passed, the bills would ban the chemical by 2007. Companies that release PBDEs prior to 2007 would have to file a discharge report with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
Many factories still remain unaware of the role the chemicals play in their business.
But Kolb said he expects the five-year period to provide enough time for businesses to react.
“We’re giving them the lead time,” he said. “With that five-year lead-in time, it’s time enough to find an additional compound.”
Much less research has been done on the chemicals compared to the PCB chemicals, said Lawrence Fischer, director of the Institute of Environmental Toxicology at MSU.
But since the compounds share a similar structure to PCBs, Fisher said they also share many of the same properties, such as persistence in the environment and accumulation up the food chain.
Fisher said those characteristics make the compound a likely candidate for health and environmental problems.
“I would say that certainly the yellow flag is up and it tells us that we need to learn more about the toxicity of these,” he said. “The rationale to stop making these things is probably not a bad idea.”
Much of the policing of the ban would fall on the DEQ, which also monitors PCB usage.
Many other compounds, such as dioxins, have come under the attention of both federal and state governments since the PCB ban but DEQ spokesman Ken Silfven said the department is weary of too much regulation.
“You have to be careful,” he said. “There are compounds that you might not want to be exposed to over certain limits but they do have practical uses.”
But if the bills pass, the department shouldn’t have too much of a problem with a new regulation.
“Something on the magnitude of PCBs, you can’t hide that,” he said. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to trace them back to the source.”
