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Beware the Toxic Chemicals at Dollar Stores
The nation’s largest dollar stores continually fail to meaningfully strengthen their chemical policies and intervene in their supply chains to keep their shoppers safe.
Dec 03, 2024
When shopping for the holidays, most people reasonably assume that products sold in major American retail stores are free of toxic chemicals. After all, harmful substances like lead and mercury have no place in the shopping cart, and regulations must prevent this kind of dangerous exposure, right?
Unfortunately, this is not the case. A recent study revealed that over half of the items tested on dollar stores’ shelves contained toxic chemicals. This includes lead foundin tablecloths, jewelry, and baby toys with known links to brain development harm; phthalates in school supplies, silly straws, and bath toys with links to early puberty in girls, birth defects in the male reproductive system, obesity, and diabetes; BPA in receipts, cookware, and can linings that can affect the brain and prostate gland of fetuses, infants, and children; and PFAS—long-lasting synthetic chemicals—found in popcorn bags that can affect the immune system and liver function.
Just last month Toxic Free Future released their latest Retailer Report Card, which graded Dollar General with a D+ and Dollar Tree/Family Dollar with a D for safety, based on hazardous chemicals in their products, company commitment to transparency, a willingness to change, and how easily customers can tell what substances are on store items.
With the incoming presidential administration promising to slash health and safety rules, customers and communities will have even fewer protections.
But for many families, shopping elsewhere isn’t an option. Dollar stores are often the only retailers selling essential household goods, including food, in many rural towns and urban neighborhoods, leaving customers with nowhere else to go. Dollar stores are frequently located in communities that already face multiple health and environmental risk factors, such as industrial pollution from factories or deteriorated drinking water. This means a family’s exposure to chemicals via items purchased at dollar stores is part of accumulated exposures.
Dollar stores’ leadership has been aware for over a decade that their products contain lead, BPA, phthalates, and PFAS, jeopardizing customer health. During this time, environmental justice and public health groups nationwide have advocated for safer products. Investors in these companies have raised concerns directly with management and through shareholder resolutions. Yet, the problem persists. Even this year Dollar Tree knowingly kept lead-contaminated apple sauce on its shelves, putting children in harm’s way. The stores have taken only minimal actions to address a handful of chemicals in some product categories.
To say federal agencies tasked with regulating these products fall short would be an understatement. Many take a “graveyard approach,” acting only after someone has suffered a physical toll. The federal Toxic Substances Control Act is so weak that only a handful of chemicals have ever been restricted, while tens of thousands have been exempted or fast-tracked for approval. With the incoming presidential administration promising to slash health and safety rules, customers and communities will have even fewer protections.
With this lack of protective action on the part of state and federal regulators, we urge dollar stores to do the right thing. In 2023, Dollar General's net sales were over $38 billion, and Dollar Tree’s revenues were over $30 billion. They can afford to stop buying products from suppliers that use toxic chemicals and switch to readily available safer alternatives. Mike Creedon, interim chief executive officer for Dollar Tree, claims, “Safety First, Safety Always is the guiding mantra for our store.” But these are only words when there is no action.
Instead, the nation’s largest dollar stores continually fail to meaningfully strengthen their chemical policies and intervene in their supply chains to keep their shoppers safe. Dollar General failed to expand its list of 19 restricted substances. The list does not include PFAS, most phthalates, and many other chemicals known to cause harm. It also applies only to private-label products. Similarly, Dollar Tree has not publicly documented progress on reducing chemicals or plastics of high concern in the last four years and has made no indication of support for the development or sale of safer products.
Competitors, including Walmart, have already made this change. In 2022, the company disclosed that it removed 37 million pounds of phthalates from products in response to consumer demand, with publicly available corporate policies. Similarly, Apple recently received praise for removing harmful chemicals and plastics from its products and even committed to a Full Material Disclosure program which promises manufacturers full transparency on products’ material compositions. These transitions are increasingly mainstream, and dollar stores are falling further and further behind.
Every family has the right to feel safe while shopping, and with the holidays around the corner, this issue is even more important. Dollar stores should transparently report on their progress and work with their suppliers to prevent all known dangerous chemicals from being used to make products sold in stores. Until this happens, dollar stores are putting already vulnerable communities at risk. Safe alternatives exist, and the transition to non-toxic products is both feasible and cost-effective in the long run. Dollar stores must stop prioritizing profit over families. We refuse to be sacrificed for the bottom line.
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Lead Ammo Harms Wildlife and Undermines the Mission of Our National Parks
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation.
Aug 27, 2024
Earlier this month, a California condor, the first of its kind to hatch and take flight in Zion National Park, died of lead poisoning just shy of its fifth birthday. Shockingly, one of this condor’s siblings was earlier found to have the highest recorded lead value ever documented in a live bird over the entire 28-year history of the condor release program.
Lead poisoning remains the leading cause of diagnosed death among California condors. About 90% of condors trapped and tested during this past year had blood lead levels indicating lead exposure. As scavengers, condors ingest lead shot from carcasses of animals killed with lead-based ammunition.
But condors are not the only victims. Lead is a leading threat to all national park birdlife, especially bald eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Lead fragments from spent shells contaminate the entire wildlife food chain.
It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
While most parks by law do not permit hunting, a significant number do. Of the 429 national parks, 76 allow various types of hunting—recreational, subsistence, or tribal hunting. These parks (the largest of which are in Alaska) cover more than 60% of land within the entire national park system. In addition, more than 85% of parks with fish (213 in all) are open for fishing with lead tackle.
The impact is devastating. More than 130 park wildlife species are exposed to or killed by ingesting lead or prey contaminated with lead.
These wildlife deaths are preventable. Since November of 2022, Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland, the cabinet officer overseeing the National Park Service, has had a proposed rule sitting on her desk that would end the use of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle in all park units. Despite this, no action has been taken on this rule-making petition.
In contrast to the Park Service’s total inaction, its sister agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (FWS) has declared that “lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health.” The FWS has taken the first tentative steps to reduce or eliminate the use of lead ammunition by:
- Imposing partial bans on lead ammunition in certain refuges where new hunting opportunities have opened up;
- Phasing out of lead ammunition on three refuges newly opened to hunting; and
- Developing a pilot program to reimburse hunters for using lead-free ammunition.
Though these steps do not constitute a complete ban on lead ammunition, they represent a significant step forward, especially considering that nearly 80% of wildlife refuges and other management districts offer hunting and fishing access.
Unfortunately, wildlife protection does not appear to be a high priority for National Park Service Director Chuck Sams and his leadership team. Earlier this year, he approved questionable hunting practices, such as killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, using dogs and artificial lights to hunt black bears, and shooting swimming caribou from motorboats across more than 22 million acres of Park Service administered lands in Alaska.
These are not the actions of a conservation-focused agency.
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation. Such a move would place the Park Service alongside 26 states and countries that have already banned lead ammunition.
The ecological stakes are profound. It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
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4 Ways Biden Can Protect Food, Water, and Climate From a Second Trump Term
Biden has made important progress; now, he needs to continue this progress and finalize vital rules in the next several months.
Mar 03, 2024
The clock is ticking on President Joe Biden’s first term. The administration has made progress on several regulations that would defend our health, economic well-being, and environment. But these regulations would be right in the crosshairs of a second Trump administration, in the dire event he returns to the White House in 2025.
Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can more easily overturn regulations passed by the president in the previous 60 legislative days. It would just need presidential approval. That means, with former President Donald Trump in charge, we could see swift rollbacks of anything Biden finalizes after May of this year.
Ahead of November’s elections, we need to prepare for any outcome.
These next few months must be a sprint for his administration. Despite setbacks and missteps, Biden has taken massive strides to protect our food, water, and climate. To fortify this progress, the administration needs to move fast. These four things should be at the top of its to-do list.
1. Stem the Flood of Toxic PFAS Forever Chemicals
PFAS, a class of toxic chemicals, pose one of the most widespread public health threats of today. For decades, corporations made and sold PFAS while knowing the harms, with hardly a slap on the wrist.
So far, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed several measures to address this crisis. It proposed enforceable drinking water limits for two of the oldest and most common PFAS, PFOA and PFOS, as well as four other forms of PFAS.
It also proposed designating PFOA and PFOS as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund program. This would allow the EPA to direct polluters to clean up their messes and pay for it—insulating everyday people from picking up the tab. Companies must be held accountable, and these rules, when finalized, would be an important first step.
2. Protect Communities from Dirty Infrastructure Projects
One of our bedrock environmental laws is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This law directs agencies to consider environmental impacts and frontline community voices when deciding whether to permit a new project.
In 2020, Trump gutted NEPA. His rules sidelined community participation and removed important factors, like climate, in agency assessments.
Thankfully, Biden began working to roll back Trump’s changes in 2021. Notably, the first new rule includes provisions that restore the act’s definition of “indirect” and “cumulative” impacts, allowing agencies to examine the full consequences of proposed projects. The second, currently under review, cements environmental justice as a key consideration for agency assessments.
In order to lift up community voices, defend environmental justice, and protect the climate, Biden needs to finalize this rule.
3. Rein in Corporate Abuses Against Farmers and Growers
In our meat industry, just a handful of processing companies reign supreme. Because of this, many farmers have no choice but to sell to Big Meat. That has allowed these companies to dictate prices, labor conditions, supply chains, and more—and they’ll do almost anything to cut costs, even at the expense of families, farmers, and workers.
The Packers & Stockyards Act was passed more than 100 years ago to prevent this, but weak rules and enforcement have enabled Big Meat’s abuses to grow.
The Biden administration announced in 2021 that it would release new rules to strengthen the act and rein in the meat giants. However, it has finalized only one rule so far, requiring basic transparency from poultry giants to the farmers contracted to grow their chickens. Three more rules are at various stages, and each is critical to restoring competition and protecting farmers.
4. Get The Lead Out of Our Drinking Water
Last fall, the Biden administration announced groundbreaking rules that finally start to address our country’s lead-in-water crisis. For decades, communities across the country have been plagued by lead pipes that leach the toxic heavy metal into their drinking water.
Biden’s new rules set a deadline for most cities to replace lead service lines in the next 10 years. They also ban most partial lead service line replacements, which can actually increase lead levels in drinking water.
To protect our water and our health, Biden must finalize these rules ASAP and go further. He needs to pair them with funding to make sure low-income families don’t bear the cost of these replacements and include measures that ensure lead pipes aren’t replaced by PVC plastic, another toxic material.
Biden Needs to Act Fast to Keep His Promises
Biden has made important progress in protecting our food, water, and climate. Now, he needs to continue this progress and finalize vital rules in the next several months.
Ahead of November’s elections, we need to prepare for any outcome. And we know that Trump is terrible on our issues. In his last term, he plowed through our regulatory system, gutting protections for our families and our planet. Currently, his allies and advisers are scheming toward even more rollbacks and cuts in a prospective second term.
To prevent this from happening again, we need every defense possible. And that means Biden must keep his promises and finish what he started.
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