Clean Logo Empowering New York's women to achieve environmental health and justice.
Home Campaigns Take Action! About Us In the News Contact Us

Current Campaigns

Toxic Flame Retardants: Removing Hidden Household Hazards

You can find them almost anywhere: in your home, your car, your office, everyday dust... your breast milk? Many products must be fire resistant, or "flame retardant", to help slow the spread of fires.  This is an important safety feature, but the problem arises when product manufacturers add toxic chemicals instead of choosing solutions that both protect us from fires and protect our bodies from contamination.  In particular, the class of chemicals that include bromine (which acts very similarly to chlorine), known as "brominated flame retardants" are the most troubling. Here's why:  They are building up in our bodies at increasing rates (American women have 10-100 times more brominated flame retardants in our breast milk than do our Japanese or European counterparts), and have been strongly linked to developmental disabilities.  As babies nurse,  along with all the good things human milk provides them, they take in chemicals that can affect how their brains develop. We're going after the most widely-used brominated flame retardants, known as decaBDE (the full name is decabromodiphenyl ether).

Click here for more details on this important campaign.

Return to top of the page.

Get the Lead Out: Make Jewelry Safe for Children

Humans have known for centuries that the heavy metal lead is toxic. At high levels, it can kill you. At lower doses, it has been linked to drops in IQ, decreased ability to control impulses, resulting in violent behaviors, and other damage to brain development.  There is no known safe level of lead.  Even a small exposure can cause long-term harm.

So you would think that, given what we know, lead wouldn't be used in ordinary products. We got lead out of gasoline, pipes and solder for them, we got it out of indoor paint (thought the legacy of older lead paint is still the cause of 70% of lead poisoning in the U.S.). So why are we finding it at alarmingly high levels in jewelry? The Consumer Product Safety Commission, charged with safeguarding our products, has conducted recalls from time to time, but is not enforcing any strict requirements for keeping lead out of jewelry. And the jewelry that most commonly contains lead is the stuff that's most affordable. Judy Braiman of Rochesterians Against the Misuse of Pesticides tested lead in jewelry in the Rochester area, and found double-digit percentages of lead.  DEC Wildlife Pathologist Ward Stone has tested over 200 pieces of metal jewelry purchased in the Capital Region this spring, and over 50% contain unsafe levels of lead. Some have parts that are as much as 95% lead! 

Children around the country have died after swallowing pieces of lead jewelry.  Without prompt action, it is only a matter of time before this tragedy strikes here in New York.

The Department of Health is required under existing law to set levels it deems safe for lead in consumer products. In fact, they have set a goal of eliminating lead poisoning in children by 2010.  Thus far, however, the DOH has not addressed jewelry, and the research done by Ward Stone and Judy Braiman confirm that this jewelry is widely available.

Clean New York is working to get policy enacted at the State level that would further require the Department of Health to act.  Assemblyman Koon and Senator Alesi, both from the Rochester area, have been advocating setting an ultimate threshold of 200 parts per million for jewelry that gets into children's hands.  We support their efforts, although we have some recommended improvements for their current legislation, which mirrors a law passed last fall in California.

You can make a difference!

At home: You can purchase inexpensive lead paint tests (wipes or swabs) to determine if necklaces, earrings, bracelets or pins in your jewelrybox - and your child's - contain lead. The test device will change color if lead is present.

At the store: Ask the sales clerk before you buy -- if you can't be assured it is lead-free, don't buy it.  Tell the store manager why you won't make the purchase.  The products most likely to have lots of lead near the surface are the cheapest - found in Dollar Stores and in gumball machines.

At the Statehouse:  Call Department of Health Commissioner Daines (phone number) and tell him you want DOH to pull dangerous lead jewelry off the shelves immediately!  Our children can't wait.  Also, call your Assemblymember(switchboard: 518-455-4100) and Senator (switchboard: 518-455-2800) and ask them to support a ban on selling any jewelry that contains lead.

Return to top of the page.

Women and Children First

Clean New York is partnering with Healthy Schools Network, Inc., Learning Disabilities Association of New York State, Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition,  Prevention is the Cure, and other groups to focus on the two constituencies most affected by environmental pollution: women and children.  When a ship is in distress, women and children are first into the lifeboats, because their survival means the survival of the community.  So it is with toxic exposures: by ensuring that the chemicals used by modern society are safe for women and children, we preserve the whole of humanity.  It's really simple - every adult was once a child, and every child developed inside a women's body.

Our goal for the Women & Children First campaign is to serve as a state-level organizing model.  Clean New York will research environmental health threats to women, as Healthy Schools Network  has just done for children, develop and link our compelling outreach materials, and educate and engage women’s and children’s organizations to involve them in this campaign.  Activities include: 

  • Building the Collaboration – We will work in cooperation with New York’s Children’s Environmental Health Partnership, led by HSN and Learning Disabilities Association of NY, that engages experts and advocates such as Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYS United Teachers, NYSARC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
  • Hosting a "Women and Children First" Symposium – We plan to invite women and children’s advocates from across the state to learn from each other and to discuss the state of science, policy and our greatest needs for action. Stay tuned to this website for more details!
  • Crafting a Consensus Report to the Governor and Legislature – We will take the results of our symposium and develop an integrated, widely shared consensus report that documents the environmental health problems women and children face, the gaps in policy and the changes that need to happen to end this legacy of toxic contamination.
  • Testing People for Toxic Chemicals –We are working with groups around the country to document the presence of toxic subtances in people's bodies, also known as our "body burden".  We will release a report of the results to highlight the fact that humans serve as the endpoints for dangerous, unnecessary chemicals, which puts them at risk for a wide variety of diseases.

Return to top of the page.

Building our Base

Before we become too entrenched in specific campaigns, we intend to learn from real women what their needs and interests are. As a new organization, it's important for Clean New York to sit down with women-led and women-oriented organizations and talk with them about the issues of greatest concern, and not just about chemical contamination.  We want to  learn about the challenges they face in their daily lives, and more fully understand how we as Clean New York can facilitate the women of New York State to take action on their own and loved ones’ behalf. 

Return to top of the page.