 Welcome, everybody. You are in the right place. Welcome to the Standout Earth webinar. Toxics in the U.S. in the next 40 years. What will it take to protect public health? Our presenters, I'm Ann. Sorry, I'm Ann. I'm Pernick. I'm with Standout Earth. And we have Sarah Dahl from Safer States and Andy E. Greyjust from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Thank you so much, Andy and Sarah, for your preparation and all your thoughtful work to get ready for today. We're so happy to have you and also really happy to have our audience. Welcome, everybody. Andy E. Greyjust is National Campaign Director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition which includes 450 organizations and 11 million individuals from across the country, including parents, health professionals, advocates for people with learning and developmental disabilities, reproductive health advocates, environmentalists, and businesses from across the nation. They share the common concern about toxic chemicals in our homes, places of work, and products we use every day. Previously, Andy worked on environmental health and government reform issues for state organizations in New Jersey and California, and later for the National Environmental Trust in Washington. And Andy, thank you so much for being with us today. I'm going to introduce Sarah and then Andy is going to start his presentation. Sarah Dahl is the National Director at Safer States, a network of diverse environmental health coalitions and organizations in states around the country, working for new state and national chemical policies to protect families, communities, and the environment from the devastating impacts of our society's heavy use of chemicals, and also contribute to the formation of a cleaner, greener economy. Sarah is also Bright Choices Program Director at Healthy Babies Bright Futures, which is working to limit babies' exposure to toxics in their first 1,000 days of life. Previously, Sarah works with Hands-On Greater Portland and the Oregon Environmental Council, and Sarah, thank you again for being with us today. And then with that, I'm going to do a couple things. I'm going to close out my webcam and Sarah's webcam, and we'll set Andy up and bring up his slides. Hang on, just a moment while we do all that. All right, Andy, are you seeing your slides up there? I am. Thank you. Great. And I'm just going to make one last little adjustment on my screen. Okay, thank you. Take it away. Great. Thank you very much. So that's me, and I run safer chemical healthy families. I'm not used to having a camera on all the time, so I just hope I don't make faces like Mr. Kump made two nights ago. You can privately email me if you have any feedback on that. Let me go to the next slide. And described who we are, I thought it was worth lingering on for a moment. While the national environmental community and the state-based and community-based environmental community definitely has been leading the way on chemical activism and policy for a long time and formed the bulk of the original part of this coalition, we also represent a lot of parents, organizations, mom activists, health professionals like nurses, doctors, folks that are in disease-affiliated groups like the Learning Disabilities Association, the Breast Cancer Fund, Breast Cancer Action, others. And the biggest industrial union in the country, the United Steel Workers, United Auto Workers, just to say that the broad group of people that came around focusing Congress's attention on the urgency of reforming chemical policy is quite profound. And it was driven by the evidence that has been piling up over the 30s years that the Toxic Substance Control Act was not working. This evidence has bubbled up that chemicals were impacting public health that they're related to, in some cases, behind the increase in many of the chronic diseases that we see on the rise in American food. And that reform is fundamentally about that public health intervention. That's what it's about. And if it works, it's because the government is now intervening to prevent people from coming into contact with chemicals that could contribute to disease and disability and also to protect the environment. And the photo in the backdrop there is of our second Stroller Brigade. Jennifer Bielse, the actress, was headlining this one. And it was a combination of that broad coalition and then a lot of especially mom-led activism that helped keep this debate on track and when it went off track helped to get back on track. Let's go to the next slide. So the reform is called the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. It's taking hold so far people just playing with the Lautenberg Act or the Lautenberg Chemicals Act. And you know, Senator Lautenberg, I worked with the late Senator Lautenberg for years and always admired his commitment. He was one of these people that always referred to his upbringing where he came from in Paterson, New Jersey, which I grew up right near as well in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and really thought of environmental issues as an extension of basic working class labor type issues. He would talk about the conditions in the mills in Paterson and from kind of occupational health and safety focus and outward with the community and then onward to consumers. And I think that he's someone who always knew what he was for and fought for it for a long time. As some folks know, shortly after the compromise legislation was unveiled, Senator Lautenberg passed away and we had this long fight over the last three years over the details of this legislation. And the, you know, the fight went sideways for a while. For a while, I didn't even say it went upside down. We had the industry saying they were the reformers and all of us who were the reformers were being accused of obstructionism. But I think we turned it around and sort of got it back on track. And at the end of the day, I believe that prevailing view, there's a range of views. Some people opposed the final bill while acknowledging some of the good things. A few groups endorsed it, but very few. But I think most were in the space where our campaign ended up, which was we were disappointed by the outcome as it relates to the size of the problem of chemicals and their impact on public health and the environment. But the bill became, over time, after a lot of fight, net positive and that there were more proactive public health reforms in there than there were special interest things or things that would dial anything back. So ultimately we ended up with something that if I had to summarize in a nutshell, EPA can finally now get in on the act of intervening to protect public health and the environment from toxic chemicals. It just won't be doing that at a pace and with a scope, at least initially or unless something changes that really solves the problem. So next slide. I want to highlight some of the achievements in the bill. I hope you can see this. And some of these are very big. I think the core one, as many of you may know, one of the reasons that the original law, the Toxic Substance Control Act, didn't work is EPA spent years putting together the proposed restriction on asbestos and then that was thrown out of court. And it basically shut down the EPA's ability to tackle the chemicals that were already in commerce, the ones that had been grandfathered under the law in 1976, which is still the bulk of chemicals in commerce. It was 64,000 chemicals that they had that were grandfathered at the time. And there were issues in that lawsuit or in that court decision that basically sent the message to EPA that you'll never be able to use this law. And the most fundamental reform in this bill is that it addressed those issues. And those issues include that it went from being a cost benefit standard where you literally had to prove that the money saved by protecting people from asbestos outweighed the costs of removing asbestos from the economy. And it moved to a health only standard, which is very important. And it also got rid of a requirement that EPA choose the least burdensome way of addressing the chemical. So the reform tackled those issues. And then it did something more, which is it explicitly requires EPA to identify and protect any population that is disproportionately exposed to the chemical or disproportionately susceptible to injury from the chemical. And this should provide it fully implemented a very powerful new handles to protect the workers who are disproportionately exposed, communities along the fence line to get disproportionate exposure, and then susceptible populations of the developing fetus, pregnant women, children, etc. etc. They have to protect not just identify, but then the final reform has to remove the risk, the unreasonable risk that chemical presents to those groups. And that's something that we've been trying to get into the law in many contexts. And I think it was a significant victory. And it's very clearly identified that in the legislative history and everything else that we're talking about workers, we're talking about heavily exposed communities and that kind of thing. Something that we were able to, as part of our platform from the beginning, was to deal with persistent bioaccumulative toxins, toxic chemicals as a particular class that EPA would have to identify and move more quickly on. We retained a portion of that in the final bill. It's limited to a subset of the chemicals EPA had already identified as PBTs on their work plan process, which is a list of chemicals they already prioritized as bad. So I think at the end of the day we're talking about 7 to 10 chemicals on this, but those chemicals basically skip an evaluation phase and go straight to how much can we reduce this chemical in the economy to protect people. And that could be very important if they implement it correctly. They made it easier in the bill to order manufacturers to test the toxicity of their chemicals. One of the big failures of TOSCA is it required the EPA to go through a lengthy full notice and comment rulemaking, which is a years-long undertaking, just to require testing. And the bill got rid of that, allows EPA to require toxicity testing, based on for almost any reason, with a simple order. They just basically say, hey, you have to do some testing, and that could be a major improvement. There are some limited improvements to confidential business information, which have been very abused. I think a part of the confidential business information, this is where the industry was claiming almost everything about the chemical as secret under the old law, including the name of the chemical and sometimes who they were as the company, where it was going to be used, all these things, that's been changed. It's been changed in the biggest way in terms of sharing that information in full with state and local governments and with health providers. And so those folks should get all the information. The public information reforms are more mild. New chemical review. This is about when chemicals come on the market since TOSCA passed in 1976. That has been tightened also, and that should be helpful. And then finally, there are deadlines that are enforceable. They're long. When EPA identifies a chemical that's a high priority, they have three years to complete the evaluation of whether it is harming people, and then two more years to put in place the restrictions that would prevent that harm. There are extensions available. And so their generous deadlines are longer than a lot of us would have liked, but if you compare it to a history of EPA evaluations that have dragged on for decades, the deadlines just in on themselves are a big change from the status quo. So next slide. The black slide is to talk about preemption. The major thing that the industry, the regulated industry wanted in exchange for having enhanced EPA authority was to expand preemption. Preemption describes the circumstances under which the federal law overrules the state or local law. And a lot of health and safety or environmental statutes that federal law sets the floor, but not the ceiling. What TOSCA had before is that the states were only granted an EPA put in place restrictions, but there was no preemption if EPA declared something safe. So that's the first and most significant expansion of preemption. If EPA now declares something safe after it's gone through a health only evaluation that's looked at the vulnerable populations, disproportionate exposure, et cetera, et cetera, there is limited preemption for that chemical. The thing and the environmental public health community was willing to agree to that in some form by and large if the standard was good enough that the preemption was limited enough. But the industry got something more in this, which was the preemption begins before EPA finishes its evaluation. And they call that pause preemption. We all call it void because it occurs in a regulatory void. And that was something that survived in the bill that we all thought and very disappointed by. But the impact of that at the end of the day, I think, is limited because A, you're able to secure a grace period working with a lot of people in Congress where states, if they act within the first year and a half after EPA identifies a chemical, they're exempted from this pause. So that helps. And then the preemption itself is limited to the pace of what EPA is reviewing. There's no state activities automatically stopped because of this bill. So if EPA doesn't get around to actually reviewing and finishing rules on these chemicals for some reason or another, the preemption doesn't kick in. And so the very limitation of the bill overall that it's looking at a relatively small number of chemicals at any given time that EPA under this bill winds up also moderating the effect of this preemption. But then there's other exemptions for preemption. All the existing state action that has been taken on a chemical was grandfathered under this law, which is important. The preemption is limited to whatever EPA actually reviews and rules upon. So if EPA restricts a chemical based on a concern about cancer and the state goes, oh, wait a second. We've discovered a problem with aquatic toxicity. They can still act on that. And the same thing if the federal government is only looking at these five uses, the state is allowed to act on the other uses. Plus there's all the non-tosca uses, cosmetics, food packaging, other things that don't fall under the jurisdiction of the Toxic Substances Control Act that are not preempted at all because they're not subject to the bill. And then there's these last ones I mentioned that are explicit. Information collection reporting, air, water, and waste laws are all exempted. So there's a lot of state activity. The whole scope of activity for most chemicals, because there's still tens of thousands of chemicals, and EPA will be looking at them in batches of 20. So the pond is still out there for the states to act. And then there's a lot of stuff they can do even around those 20 because of these limitations on preemption. So next slide. So as I said, the main improvement here is that EPA really couldn't do just about anything before on the worst chemicals, not just the worst chemicals, but any existing chemical. But even these ones that we've known a lot about for a long time. And the biggest improvement is now that they can and must act on these chemicals and do it the way that's more than keeping with our understanding of the differential vulnerability of human beings to toxic compounds. And this is the list that our coalition put together. EPA has to name its first 10 chemicals by the end of this year. It's actually in December. And then the clock will start on those chemicals. So it's a big test case. And these are the ones that we recommended EPA get started on first. And it was a mixture of looking at the chemicals that we believe were the most urgent, health threat, and also those where, based on the information EPA has at hand now, we think they're most likely to have a strong start to be able to succeed with their new authority. So next slide. Okay, so the main takeaways we'd have is that this was difficult fight. And a lot of the process as a result of this is emphasized the controversy. And I think that was correct. And we were behind some of that because at times the reform on the table really wouldn't have done any good. It would have done some harm. But where we ended up is with a law that will do some good, even if EPA is dealing with a limited number of chemicals. If those chemicals can touch millions of people. And TASCA is unique in that it's a law that requires the agency to look at the whole supply chain, all along that supply chain, the workers at the plant, workers who might be using it along the way, the communities along the way, the end users, the consumers. And then this inclusion of the disproportionate exposure and the disproportionate susceptibility to harm should mean that when EPA does take action it takes real action, thorough action that protects people. And so that's a big deal and could help millions of people even if the pace is going to be slower than what we all sit out for and apply to a more limited number of chemicals in the short run. And it also means I think that limited pace means that this is not, this doesn't solve the problem of toxic chemicals, not by a long shot. Europe will continue to I think lead the way in regulating chemicals and state activity potentially could as well compared to this federal process is just going to be slow. We're going to need to watch off EPA's implementation of this and also Congress's oversight of EPA. Part of the game in Washington is that the regulated industry when it doesn't like something often beats up the agency through their favorite member of Congress especially if they're well placed. So keeping an eye on and participating in the political process, both the administrative process but then also the budget and the oversight process to make sure that we get these benefits from this law is going to be key. And then finally I think that the modest potentially significant improvement that we're going to get to public health of EPA does all these things right in the next several years. It could be outweighed if the just the passage of this law led to standing down in these other areas. The fact is that retailers right now and other institutional professors, healthcare providers, the building industry, a number of other sectors are looking at lists of thousands of chemicals of concern. There's actually some great great coming together if you look at Target's list and Walmart's list and the list of the healthcare that harm a practice green health groups of what chemicals are of concern and they're forcing substitution to safer chemicals in the marketplace. And so I think the pace and scope of a lot of that change is critical and I think some of the regulated industry will try to hide this reform into saying we don't need the state or the marketplace actions anymore, EPA is taking care of it. And if they were to be successful with that that would potentially lead to flipping this equation where it would this whole thing would do more harm than good because a lot of these other areas are making more change more quickly that we need. And so our final message is let's make sure that doesn't happen. Let's get the most out of this long list, participate in the political process because there are powerful new tools here we can use to protect people. But let's also collectively keep the pedal down on toxic chemicals through these market campaigns at all levels of government to make sure that we're getting closer to the kind of change we need to really protect PropaPill. So thank you, I'll stop there. Great, Andy, actually just take us really quick through this last slide we've got on them. Yeah, I think that's the part that helps us the most. We'd love to have you involved with us if you're not already. The link to join our email list is at the top of our website and saferchemicals.org. Our retailer campaign, mindthestore.org, you can also join us there. We're on Facebook and we're also on Twitter. I'm not good at either of those things but we are there and we get a lot of information out of that way and we'd love to have you. Terrific. Andy, thank you so much. Sit tight. We're going to close your webcam, pull up Sarah's, and then we'll bring yours back up for the Q&A. All right, Sarah. I'm going to bring up your webcam here. There we go. We'll close Andy's. Okay, great, and then I'll pull up your slides. Okay, terrific. Take it away. Great. Well, thanks Ann for this opportunity. It's out there. Safer States is a coalition of health-based coalitions. Imagine safer chemicals, healthy families, but in the microcosm at the state level. And really, we were there as a key part of the base and pushing for safer chemicals, healthy families around Tosco reform, and part of trying to strengthen that. But other key parts of our agenda is really using state policy campaigns to create momentum and create actual protections in the states that model what we really wanted to see federally. And really, the ultimate goal is to build the power and the leverage needed to change what's on store shelves and in people's homes around the nation. 34 states adopted over 170 chemical policies over the last 10 years. Tosco reform happened. So now what? Next slide. We know that a single protection in a single state is not going to protect the nation. A house needs a roof to keep the rain out. But we also know that under an ineffective TOSCA, we've been living in a house with a very leaky roof for a long time and we're drenched in chemicals and they're changing the nation's health. There are essential things that a big national policy like TOSCA can and should do, which is what Andy was really talking about. But it's really important to know that big policies like TOSCA have limitations. Next slide. Fortunately, we don't have to choose between big regulators like the EPA and the FDA and small, nimble, creative state and market campaigns. I want to talk about one chemical as an example and one that's not actually covered by TOSCA. Next slide. The chemical triclosan was created in a lab and patented in 1964. It was originally used to vary effectively to reduce bacteria in hospital settings. Next slide. It's under the authority of FDA as a drug and under EPA as a pesticide. Products like soap, toothpaste, deodorant, must be labeled as a drug listing triclosan. But when it's used in toys or furnishings as a pesticide to preserve the material, it does not have to be labeled. That's EPA. Next slide. It grew from about a dozen consumer products in 1994 to be used in 75% of all liquid soap on the market and more than 2,000 other products. Today, it's also ubiquitous in our lives. Triclosan is found in 75% of urine samples, 95% of breast milk, and is one of the top 10 water contaminants in the United States. Turns out, by the way, it's also an endocrine disruptor toxic to water systems and it fuels antibiotic resistance. Next slide. It took FDA from 1974 to 2016 to finally regulate the chemical and ban it in household soap. EPA reassessed the safety of the pesticide in 2008 and then Earth manufacturers to stop using it in paint. It can still be used without a label in fabrics, plastic toys, toothbrushes, and other earths, a lot of places still. So, the FDA took more than 40 years to regulate something that showed reason for concern. What else happened during that time? Well, in 2008, a group of state and federal advocates filed a complaint. Women's voices for the earth and others led the charge in exerting consumer pressure for change while beyond pesticides and NRDC put pressure on the authorities. 2010 lawsuit. 2013 becomes part of the hazardous 100 list of chemicals of concern targeted by a mind the store and then getting ready for baby and the dollar store. 2014 Minnesota becomes the first state to ban Triclosan and many other states continue to introduce policies to keep pressure on the marketplace. Oregon and Washington, it became a chemical to avoid as part of the state's green procurement policy. Next slide. Some might look at these scatterers and see gaps in protections but at safer states we see it as a web. It was not the single strands but the net that spurred real change in the marketplace. Major manufacturers including Procter and Gamble are removing Triclosan from products. Walmart will no longer sell personal care products containing Triclosan and the FDA estimates that the ban will reduce Americans exposure to these ingredients by over 2 million pounds a year. I could tell you this story with many other chemicals like Bisphenol, toxic flame retardants, phthalates and children's products where state power, consumer power, advocate engagement made significant change with the federal actions sort of trailing behind following the lead. So what can the states do and our partners the federal agencies can't? Next slide. We connect quickly. State and consumer action on Triclosan once underway was making major changes in the marketplace within just a few years. Agencies as we saw took decades to act. Same story with toxic flame retardants. Once the powerful California team changed the regulation that allowed for toxic flame retardant free furniture states in concert with the market actors regulatory strategies that pull in the best science are really helping slam the door on these unnecessary toxic additives in furniture and children's products and pivoting to other sectors where those are unnecessary. States can also react quickly to emerging priorities such as drinking water contamination, whether from perfluorinated compounds which are showing up in drinking water as a result of firefighting foam or the reemergence of lead in water systems. And I absolutely anticipate seeing policies introduced to address drinking water concerns in 2017 state legislatures. Next slide. We can act nimbly. Thousands of chemicals are produced each year and many, many millions of pounds and they're ending up in our homes. The sort of Andy was saying, you know, the list of targets list is thousands. Under the revised toss goods going to take decades to see action on each of those chemicals. And so as with Triclosan states and retailers can help set priorities and move manufacturers towards action. Priorities are increasingly focused from my perspective on product sectors like children's products, food packaging, personal care products, which are about pushing an entire sector to be safer, not just without a specific chemical. I think that's one of the evolutions of the movement. And it's really parallel to the push to get companies to develop the chemical policy for their entire company. Like what Mind the Store is doing, creating pressure on the top 10 retailers to develop chemical policies and like the tool that's been created by Clean Production Action, which helps a company identify their entire chemical footprint. Disclosure and prioritization policies in states are really a key component of helping setting set priorities. States have the power to require companies to tell them what's in their products, something that's not going to be broadly required under revised TOSCA. I would argue it's not an accident that Walmart and Target moved to develop policies on chemicals within months of the state of Washington requiring them to publicly disclose the presence of chemicals and products for children. States can pool that information from their disclosure and prioritization programs in ways that help inform what chemicals EPA selects next in terms of what it's going to focus on. But it also will inform the marketplace as well as states own priorities because it will be filling data gaps and providing information that simply isn't available otherwise. I anticipate absolutely seeing disclosure policies introduced in 2017 that harmonize with market priorities and really are designed to fill some key data gaps. Next slide. We can act bigger and smarter together. The web that we talked about that needs to gather the triglycine story is where I think we're going. But with us more deliberately creating the web. As I mentioned earlier, key partners really came together to create market, state, regulatory, best science pressure to reduce exposures to and shift the market away from toxic flame retardants and are having real success in key product sectors. I think that's a model that we're continuing to move down. Next slide. And as Andy highlighted, I believe deeper coordination in a time where our opposition is going to tell the world that the problem is solved because of the passage of TASCA. We have already heard that. We will continue to hear that. And there is this sense, okay, now we need to move on, chemicals are done. Even within our own partnerships, not necessarily even just from our opposition. Okay, check box done. And that is as Andy was articulating and clarifying for us really just isn't the case. And the strategies and tactics that I have talked about are actually things that the states have been doing for years and years in areas both under TASCA jurisdiction, but also under jurisdiction of, for example, a BPA was regulated under FDA. So there is plenty of space for the states to continue to move into the space like food packaging or personal care products that need both the federal piece, but then also use that space to help EPA prioritize chemicals that are of real concern to communities and to states and to create information for the marketplace and EPA and the states to actually continue to take action. So we the states are going to continue to do what we do best. We're going to be fast, we're going to be nimble, and we're going to be well coordinated and we invite you to join us. So you can go check us out on the web or Facebook or Twitter, and that's our information. Great, Sarah, thank you very much. Okay, hold, sit tight. We're going to bring up Andy's webcam. Okay, great. We can see everybody again. Okay, super. I'm going to just put us on the last slide here for just a second and then just to let people know that we remind you that we are recording this and we will post this and we'll email all RSVPs when it's posted. And I see a bunch of questions. So let's get to those. Okay, expand my question window here. Okay, we have a question from Alexandra B. And Alexandra, I'm going to go ahead and unmute your line. And then folks who have questions and haven't submitted them yet, please go ahead and drop them into that little questions pane on your dashboard, because we would love to get your questions and your thoughts in on this conversation. Okay, with that, I'm going to go ahead and see if we can get Alexandra's line open. Hi, Alexandra, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Thanks. Great. Okay. And go ahead. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Can you see the question or do you want me to state it? Oh, we always like to let people ask their own question. So if you don't mind. Sure. Well, my question is really just about the pace of the assessments. My understanding was that the EPA is only required to evaluate a handful of chemicals per year. And given the inventory of chemicals on the market and the hundreds of new chemicals that are being developed every year, the pace I think I heard that they're required to do somewhere between five and 10 per year. It just seems absurdly low. We'll never reach a critical point of having more chemicals assessed than unassessed. Yeah, the pace is a big disappointment. It's not actually written as a per year. That's something we thought for and couldn't get at the high watermark was at one point the house bill required 10 chemicals per year. The new one requires EPA to have named 10 by the end of this year. And and three and a half years from now, I've gotten up to 20 and then basically to have at all times 20 that are under their under review. And when it when one drops off to add is finished, add another one. They can do more than that. You know, they it's a minimum not a not it's a minimum requirement, not a maximum requirement. But that's why I like that is the a key limitation of this bill compared to the problem. I mean, I think that the the reason why it's still a big deal is that, you know, 10, 20 chemicals being, especially if they're the right chemicals, chemicals that are widely used in commerce and where there's a lot of exposure and they're non problematic chemicals. It's millions of people that are exposed to those chemicals and restricting them to prevent the exposure could be a very big deal for public health. But it's it's definitely the the pace is the crux of why we really say this is this is not this is not a reform that's at least at the minimum level that we approach these things, which is, you know, will EPA do more? Concerns will tell you EPA, you know, does way more than they're asked to do. And most environmental groups would say, oh my god, you have to sue them to get them to do the minimum. If you take that second view, the pace that's in this bill is definitely not sized to the size of the problem we have with chemicals. One thing I would point out, though, is depending on how creative the agency gets, the testing authority in the bill could be significant that EPA really could test order the testing of many more chemicals than that smaller number that's under review right there. And combined maybe with other people acting on the results of that testing, we could get more change effectively in the world than just from this narrower pipeline of priority chemicals. So is your sense from working with people inside the EPA, is your sense that they were waiting for this sort of permission, and they actually will take initiative and be creative and use the authority they've been giving as expansively as they can? Or no, I think it's a fixed bag. I mean, I think definitely EPA, this law was unusual in that TASCA, both in testing and in the chemical reviews, the way the law was interpreted and in some ways the label law maybe was intended, it really did block them from doing even the basic thing. And so I think there's a lot of pent-up interests in the agency of like, yeah, we're going to go, we're trying to do this. And they have hit the ground running more or less since it's passed. I haven't talked about a bunch of smaller rule makings and things that are important rule makings, but they're wonky. I didn't talk about them here, but they're sort of jump right in. They've had public meetings and events, et cetera. I think this testing thing is going to be hard because the chemical industry really, really doesn't want there to be testing that isn't immediately being used to craft a federal evaluation. They don't like the idea of data sitting out there and people doing stuff with it. And so I think there will be political resistance to some of how we would want to see this thing implemented, not just on map, but on some other areas. And that's where the watchdogging comes in. So I think that there is a lot of goodwill and pent-up interest in the agency of like, wow, they really want to get started. They want to get going on this. But I think there will also be headwinds when they start to do this that mean that we'll need to stay on them to try and make it happen. Great. Thank you. Sarah, is there anything you want to add on that? Sarah, can you hear me? Oh, yeah. Sarah, is there anything you want to... Oh, I'm muted. Sorry, I muted myself. Sarah, is there anything that you wanted to add on that? I think that the pace of evaluation reinforces, as you sort of what Andy had just said, and I was resonating, the need for both the state piece and the market piece big. When you got target, have a list of thousands of chemicals, how do you shift the rest of the marketplace to be thinking about it with that kind of breadth? How do you create more information in the marketplace so that we can ask better questions that then can inform whatever happens at the federal level, but then just creating more momentum and more expectations we have of companies and corporations about how they're treating chemicals in their supply chains? Great. We have an interesting follow-up to this from Joanna M., an interesting suggestion of a really different approach on EPA. Let me pull up Joanna. All right, Joanna, I think your line is open. Hi, can you hear me okay? We can. Oh, great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I kind of did have a follow-up with that, and it's a little bit of a two-part thing, I suppose, and the way I phrased it in the question box is would it be possible for the EPA to create one regulatory action to tax all chemicals of concern by volume in commerce in order to deter their use? As a starting point, and there's kind of two parts in there because I say chemicals of concern, and it's based on what California did, was to rely on other people's lists to determine kind of the issues with the chemicals that had there, and as a result, it has about full-footed chemicals identified. And then I say tax is sort of a way to scale some sort of regulatory action without, you know, if you're doing chemical by chemical, you have to go through that entire process individually, but if you can just create one structure to affect the market in one regulatory action, you're kind of accelerating that process. So I don't know whether any of that is possible, but I was very curious about that. It's interesting. I think that they're probably unlikely to try and do that at least soon, but there are opportunities to group chemicals to a degree that EPA's already done that, and to some degree. So they have on their chemical work plan list, you know, a group of satellites that they're dealing with as a thing, as just, you know, as if it was one, as opposed to having to go through each one, and they have like a cluster of flame retardants, and I think the more they do stuff like that, it might be a way of getting more review, you know, pound per pound. And then on the testing thing, there's a sort of industry got a thing in there that says this can be used for a minimum data set. And a lot of us feel like that, the way that's worded, it's, you know, if EPA asked a bunch of people to do some basic testing, the law clearly gives them the authority to do that. What is a minimum data set? All right, I said tax, not to test with tax. So tax chemicals that are of concern, that are used in commerce as a way to deter their use. I can't imagine that. I'm sorry. There are fees in the bill to fund the program, and there are caps, and so there's new money that comes from fees, but Congress will still need to appropriate money. That's not what you're talking about as a policy choice, but just there's no authority to tax chemicals, sort of deliberately to disincentivize their use in the bill. Thank you, Joanna. We've got a question from Craig S. about also a different approach about trying to change our legislators a little bit. Let's see if we can bring Craig up here. All right, Craig, let's see if we can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead. Great. It's a very interesting concept to usurp the Fed by going to the States, and it seems like it's working really well, and I think we can all enjoy that, but I'm wondering what it would take to basically take back our Congress and get it back to working for the people, by the people, and one of the ways that we know works is by banding together as you all have with all these different organizations and creating a formidable lobby, and so we've got lobbies going against lobbies, and again, holding Congress to task to do their jobs. And did I miss the end? I couldn't tell if there was more at the end of that question. You were saying, because that is what we sort of did, is band together. It's still an asymmetric environment in that the chemical industry has enormous amounts of resources for lobbying and where they don't have the grassroots support, they went out and hired these firms to sort of dig it up. So at times, we had this battle between their insider money-based access and our sort of breadth and authenticity, legitimacy of the various people in this coalition and where they came from, then legislators could hear, but then they also were competing and sort of purchasing grassroots support at times, and they do have some grassroots support that is generally theirs in terms of people in the industry or in the regulated industry, but I've worked on campaign reform in the past, and this fight has made me feel that it's really important. I mean, it would make a difference if we had that, so I don't know if that gets at what you were getting at, but I would agree with that. Sara, if you have. It's a big challenge. One of the things that happened in the state legislatures was redistricting in 2010, which led to real changes in state legislatures, and I would say a lack of openness to the conversation, even though really there's bipartisan support for it. People get it, and especially when you get to a vote, it's really hard to vote against poisoning babies, or for poisoning babies, but it's hard to get it to that point, and the conversation around how do we shift our politics to be more less about money and more about representation is huge, and so it is a part of what many of our partner groups are working on, and just trying to figure out how to leverage that collective into that broader conversation, but it's so big, it's hard to know exactly which point in part to move that's actually going to change the game. Thank you, Craig. We have a couple of different questions that are related in time, I think, just to kind of talk to them a little bit big picture in a bunch. We have one from Malin and from Susan. There are about different ways that we might educate the public in terms of, and maybe it's best to just ask about some of the things that both of your coalitions are doing to educate the public. We have questions about briefings for people, including industry. We have questions about could we set up a program to educate high school students about some of these issues, and so I'm just interested the talks given by the Green Science Policy Institute are noted, and I know that you all are working with them, so maybe just talk a little bit about the work that you're doing as a coalition or that you know some of your partners are doing to try to, and this webinar today counts for sure, but to bring these issues to a wider audience to get even more people involved. So for example, in Minnesota, they're doing healthy home house parties and going out and actually into people's homes to talk about these issues in an environment where you can actually point to things and be like we're talking about that and that and that and that really brings it down to folks and grounds it in a different way, and it's also you know like friend to friend kind of Tupperware party kind of framework, which also has a way that validates messages and then you can replicate that. So that's just one example of a model that somebody could tap into and if they wanted to replicate it. I think we've definitely done especially recently more public education around our market campaigns focused on retailers because it's been simpler and more straightforward for the general public. So for people to get on our list, you'll hear a lot about that. We have had a group of organizations you know that are in the coalition meeting to get their heads around some of the more technical issues in implementation, but I think that the kinds of things that we're about to enter of the small I think a space where the the task issues will become more real and will be needing to get back out there. So when EPA does pick its 10 chemicals and we're we're going to want to work with and reach out to the communities that we're aware of that live near the facilities where chemicals are used and produced. I think we're going to want to have targeted education with the workers in some of these facilities so that we can all stand together and we can integrate that information and advocacy as much as possible. But I will say you know me a culp of me too this legislative debate got difficult in terms of we were fighting over some stuff that's pretty hard for even nerves like myself to understand and and the implementation gets even more so. So it is a challenge to to take this these discussions wider and meaningful way. But I think when EPA actually starts looking at chemicals and we can really talk about here's how you are impacted by that chemical as a consumer. Here's how you're impacted by it maybe as a worker who uses a material you don't manufacture the chemical you use something that has it in a janitorial context or a motor mechanic or something and then also with the you know with the communities that are along the chain that is one thing about this law that is is unique is it is one of the only laws that really looks at the whole picture of the chemical and the EPA is supposed to look at that whole picture and intervene anywhere along that whole supply chain where people are being put at risk. And I think it will take a lot of public outreach to involve the people who are hitting along that supply chain to make this work and to make this issue alive at least in the federal department for more people. So I think we do need to do more. Terrific. I don't know if Sarah and Andy I don't know if you can stay on for one more minute. If you can we have an interesting question from Claire B about using procurement in these campaigns using procurement policies. Do you have one or two more minutes or if not I can send you that question and get your thoughts by email. You know simple to say procurement at the corporate or state or local level is a key potential strategy that folks are already utilizing and likely will continue to do. It takes capacity to educate procurement professionals and how it fits into their sustainability definitions which they already are moving around climate change and other priorities. And so the question is how does this fit into that and that's the opportunity now. So it is something that's on our agenda. I would agree with that. And I think I don't know if that's actually where you said Claire B if that's all these things that work. That's a great improvement right there. I think those kinds of institutional purchase where we do want to rally the general public and average consumers but it's hard to do that around big lists of chemicals. I mean it's that's where the thing that has been derided by the industry and that some of us also tried to you know get away from the time of the chemical of the month idea that something is in the news. But you know the fact is the average person it's hard to keep all of this stuff straight and to make an impact. You need to sometimes get very specific about this chemical in that product. And here's what you can do about it as an individual. But the procurement is one of those places where we can have professional people over time really look at large larger numbers of chemicals and excuse me also really impose requirements that we're not just moving away from a known bad but that you want to move the person supplying you to a known good and not just one and that's that comes back to this thing that I hope gets used in this law that we'll not just hope but we'll be working to try and make this happen is can each of you use its testing authority and maybe it's targeted ways on that they're eliminating the world of alternatives. So where we have a lot of movement from a known bad that is sort of waiting is not held at the pen because we'll be toward what and we want that alternative to be vetted as well as out of place with its testing authority and help shine a light here. This thing's looked at but we definitely agree that that's another important place to keep the pressure on. Terrific. I'm just going to pull up one more time the slides showing from each of your organizations how to get more information and how to get involved. Just a couple beats on this one and then a couple beats on Sarah's and I want to thank you both so much for your presentations today. It was really great. We're walking away with a lot to think about and some good ways to find out more information and get involved and I really appreciate it and I also want to thank our audience so much for being here today and let me bring up our other slide here and let everyone take a look at that one more time and thank you very much again if people have questions just send them to me and we look forward to getting you information about more webinars that are coming up down the road and thanks once again to Sarah and Andy for today. Thank you. Thank you.