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Editor’s Note: Author David Steinman not too long ago mentioned his new e book and citizen enforcement of environmental legal guidelines on Earth911’s Sustainability In Your Ear podcast. We requested him to clarify how Americans can take corporations and governments to court docket to forestall dangerous chemical substances from damaging nature and human well being.
If I had been to let you know what it’s I do, I might say author, journalist, antitoxic activist, father or mother—and citizen enforcer. I’ve taken on a number of the largest manufacturers and firms within the nation as a citizen enforcer and received court docket instances towards them utilizing out there legal guidelines in each California and the District of Columbia.
As I share in my new e book, Raising Healthy Kids: Protecting Your Children from Hidden Chemical Toxins, I efficiently sued Procter & Gamble after I found exorbitant quantities of the carcinogen 1,4-dioxane of their Herbal Essences and Pantene shampoos, profitable a consent judgement that the court docket accepted to cut back or eradicate the chemical. That was greater than a decade in the past, and I’ve been taking up massive firms ever since.
After profitable that case, I shaped the nonprofit Chemical Toxin Working Group (CTWG) to advance my work on this distinctive however vital space of the legislation and client rights.
Since that point, I’ve used the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, which the state’s voters handed in 1986 with practically two-thirds of the favored vote. CTWG has filed greater than 200 notices of violation, a requirement of the legislation, earlier than going to court docket or settling earlier than litigation. The level of the legislation is to empower customers. It requires that corporations alert customers when reproductive toxins or carcinogens are present in merchandise at dangerous quantities with clear label info. If I check merchandise and discover excessive quantities and might show they’re dangerous to customers and society, the legislation permits residents to implement its rules.
You Can Join The Battle
This is so empowering and locations an superior duty on particular person residents who use the legislation to do their civic responsibility. Most of the instances, in truth, that are introduced beneath this California legislation are achieved by citizen enforcers. I do know that I take the work critically and convey solely robust instances that we are able to win within the courts.
But it’s very important that the legislation be enforced. With such info, customers could make knowledgeable selections and use their buying {dollars} to vote for the change they want to see.
The legislation has additionally made merchandise comparable to Herbal Essences and Pantene safer for everybody since adjustments in California are sometimes mirrored nationwide.
The CTWG has received instances towards corporations like Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, Kroger, and Walmart to require outstanding label disclosures of hidden chemical toxins that buyers have a proper to find out about.
In Washington, D.C., our group has used the Consumer Procedures Protection Act (CPPA), efficiently stopping false promoting that personal-care merchandise are free from phthalates. This victory got here after our testing revealed the presence of those troubling reproductive and developmental toxins in personal-care merchandise.
The significance of citizen enforcement in our authorized system can not be overemphasized. State and federal governments are sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of unlawful poisonous and so brief staffed that there’s little or nothing they will do. At different instances, public officers might even be lax of their willingness to implement environmental legal guidelines.
But we don’t have to really feel helpless. I gained the braveness to strive to seek out an legal professional who would do the work on contingency and assist me to win in court docket. The first win was intoxicating. You can do that too. It takes perseverance and an legal professional who is aware of the legislation in your state.
Citizens, Charge Into The Breach!
I’ve seen loads of success tales.
Sharon C. Lavigne, of Rise St. James, in Cancer Alley, Louisiana, the extremely industrialized hall of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, has used citizen enforcement legal guidelines to require that state businesses do their job and defend residents from the proposed Formosa plastics plant deliberate for her parish.
Michael Hickey, of Hoosick Falls, used the legislation to tackle polluters in his his hometown for his or her dangerous discharges of cancer-causing eternally chemical substances into their public water provides.
Stephanie Mero, a hairdresser in Orlando, Florida, shaped a Devacurl customers group on Facebook that has greater than 60,000 members, a lot of whom reported a wide range of scalp and pores and skin accidents and fertility points they related to their use of the merchandise (which comprise quaternium compounds related to infertility). Her group was instrumental in bringing collectively customers and the success of a class-action lawsuit filed towards the corporate.
In reality, 16 states empower citizens to enforce state environmental laws. Among probably the most highly effective legal guidelines is the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, handed in 1969, which authorizes any particular person to carry an motion “for the safety of the air, water, and different pure assets and the general public belief in these assets from air pollution, impairment, or destruction.”
South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nevada have very related legal guidelines. Ten state residents should be part of because the plaintiff in Massachusetts. The Louisiana Environmental Quality Act permits residents to implement practically any side of state environmental legislation.
Health and environmental rules work higher when residents are capable of implement the legislation.
Some 75 % of the reported civil environmental instances are the results of citizen fits, notes Natural Resources & Environment. The common variety of annual citizen actions is round 770 yearly.
Do Your Part In Your Community
Democracy works greatest once we reap the benefits of all people’s distinctive skills and specialties to supply alternatives for them to take part within the civic lifetime of the nation.
But we want extra citizen enforcers whether or not they’re river keepers, a part of the bay watch, or just the neighborhood poisonous watch.
Often, should you are uncertain of how one can begin, yow will discover assist out of your native environmental group. The Sierra Club, EarthJustice, and Natural Resources Defense Council are a number of of the nationwide organizations that work with native neighborhood communities on authorized points involving environmental justice. They will hearken to your story. They are there to assist.
I reached out to an legal professional who listened and believed in my first case. You can additionally, and discover assist from authorized consultants who share your considerations and are as vitally excited about our future as you’re.
About the Author
David Steinman’s new e book Raising Healthy Kids: Protecting Your Children from Hidden Chemical Toxins (Skyhorse Publishing, June 2024) is offered out of your native impartial bookseller, Powell’s Books, or at Amazon.com.
