Are We on the Same Page? Action Agenda of the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures

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When it comes to the regulation of hazardous chemicals, change in any direction tends to proceed at a snail’s pace. The primary law governing chemicals and health, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA),1 has not been revised since it was passed in 1976, due in part to legislative gridlock and lack of consensus among stakeholders. So it may come as something of a surprise that over the past two years there has been a broad-based, intense, and relatively rancor-free effort to revitalize and rationalize how we manage hazardous industrial and naturally occurring chemicals. The National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures,2 brainchild of former Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) director Howard Frumkin, delivered its final product—the Action Agenda3—on 9 June 2011. “Most of us would agree we don’t want to be around dangerous chemicals. That’s a fairly widely shared value,” Frumkin says. “But you wouldn’t know it based on the amount of polarization and shouting that goes on.” Now dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, Frumkin became frustrated during his years at the ATSDR, where he concurrently directed the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He wanted to improve federal agency coordination, identify areas of overlapping or redundant responsibility, make information about chemical health effects easily accessible to the general public, streamline and integrate the enormous amount of scientific data on chemicals, and reduce children’s exposure to harmful chemicals. He also wanted to re-establish a strong connection between the public health community and the environmental and occupational health communities. And he sought a fundamental change of perspective from a system based on what the Action Agenda describes as reliance on “treatment after harm has occurred”3 to one that prevents health problems.