Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe, Playing With Fire: Chemical companies, Big Tobacco and the toxic products in your home. Chicago Tribune, 6 May 2012. Six-part series published between 6 May and 30 December 2012. This series won the Nieman Foundation’s 2012 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. “The average American baby is born with 10 fingers, 10 toes and the highest recorded levels of flame retardants among infants in the world. The toxic chemicals are present in nearly every home, packed into couches, chairs and many other products. Two powerful industries — Big Tobacco and chemical manufacturers — waged deceptive campaigns that led to the proliferation of these chemicals, which don’t even work as promised.”
Winner of the 2013 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Part 1: Industry Deception: Torching the Truth. 6 May 2012.
Dr. David Heimbach knows how to tell a story. Before California lawmakers last year, the noted burn surgeon drew gasps from the crowd as he described a 7-week-old baby girl who was burned in a fire started by a candle while she lay on a pillow that lacked flame retardant chemicals. “Now this is a tiny little person, no bigger than my Italian greyhound at home,” said Heimbach, gesturing to approximate the baby’s size. “Half of her body was severely burned. She ultimately died after about three weeks of pain and misery in the hospital.” Heimbach’s passionate testimony about the baby’s death made the long-term health concerns about flame retardants voiced by doctors, environmentalists and even firefighters sound abstract and petty. But there was a problem with his testimony: It wasn’t true….
Heimbach is not just a prominent burn doctor. He is a star witness for the manufacturers of flame retardants. His testimony, the Tribune found, is part of a decades-long campaign of deception that has loaded the furniture and electronics in American homes with pounds of toxic chemicals linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility. The tactics started with Big Tobacco, which wanted to shift focus away from cigarettes as the cause of fire deaths, and continued as chemical companies worked to preserve a lucrative market for their products, according to a Tribune review of thousands of government, scientific and internal industry documents.
These powerful industries distorted science in ways that overstated the benefits of the chemicals, created a phony consumer watchdog group that stoked the public’s fear of fire and helped organize and steer an association of top fire officials that spent more than a decade campaigning for their cause. Today, scientists know that some flame retardants escape from household products and settle in dust. That’s why toddlers, who play on the floor and put things in their mouths, generally have far higher levels of these chemicals in their bodies than their parents. Blood levels of certain widely used flame retardants doubled in adults every two to five years between 1970 and 2004. More recent studies show levels haven’t declined in the U.S. even though some of the chemicals have been pulled from the market. A typical American baby is born with the highest recorded concentrations of flame retardants among infants in the world.
People might be willing to accept the health risks if the flame retardants packed into sofas and easy chairs worked as promised. But they don’t….
Citizens for Fire Safety describes itself as a group of people with altruistic intentions: “a coalition of fire professionals, educators, community activists, burn centers, doctors, fire departments and industry leaders, united to ensure that our country is protected by the highest standards of fire safety.”… But public records demonstrate that Citizens for Fire Safety actually is a trade association for chemical companies. Its executive director, Grant Gillham, honed his political skills advising tobacco executives. And the group’s efforts to influence fire-safety policies are guided by a mission to “promote common business interests of members involved with the chemical manufacturing industry,” tax records show….
Part 2: Tobacco’s Clout: Big Tobacco wins fire marshals as allies in flame retardant push. 8 May 2012.
The problem facing cigarette manufacturers decades ago involved tragic deaths and bad publicity, but it had nothing to do with cancer. It had to do with house fires. Smoldering cigarettes were sparking fires and killing people. And tobacco executives didn’t care for one obvious solution: create a “fire-safe” cigarette, one less likely to start a blaze. The industry insisted it couldn’t make a fire-safe cigarette that would still appeal to smokers and instead promoted flame retardant furniture — shifting attention to the couches and chairs that were going up in flames. But executives realized they lacked credibility, especially when burn victims and firefighters were pushing for changes to cigarettes.
So Big Tobacco launched an aggressive and cunning campaign to “neutralize” firefighting organizations and persuade these far more trusted groups to adopt tobacco’s cause as their own. The industry poured millions of dollars into the effort, doling out grants to fire groups and hiring consultants to court them….
The Tribune discovered details about Big Tobacco’s secretive campaign buried among the 13 million documents cigarette executives made public after settling lawsuits that recouped the cost of treating sick smokers. These internal memos, speeches and strategic plans reveal the surprising and influential role of Big Tobacco in the buildup of toxic chemicals in American furniture. This clever manipulation set the stage for a similar campaign of distortion and misdirection by the chemical industry that continues to this day….
The fire marshals organization continued promoting flame retardant products even after it was clear that the chemicals inside were escaping, settling in dust and winding up in the bodies of babies and adults worldwide. The marshals continued even after flame retardants were linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility. And they continued even after government scientists showed that flame retardants in household furniture were not protecting Americans from fire in any meaningful way….
Part 3: Distorting Science: Flat-out deceptive. 9 May 2012.
Twenty-five years ago, scientists gathered in a cramped government laboratory and set fire to specially designed chairs, TVs and electrical cables packed with flame retardants. For the next half-hour, they carefully measured how much the chemicals slowed the blaze. It was one of the largest studies of its kind, and the chemical industry seized upon it, claiming the results showed that flame retardants gave people a 15-fold increase in time to escape fires.
Manufacturers of flame retardants would repeatedly point to this government study as key proof that these toxic chemicals — embedded in many common household items — prevented residential fires and saved lives. But the study’s lead author, Vytenis Babrauskas, told the Tribune that industry officials have “grossly distorted” the findings of his research, which was not based on real-world conditions. The small amounts of flame retardants in typical home furnishings, he said, offer little to no fire protection. “Industry has used this study in ways that are improper and untruthful,” he said.
The misuse of Babrauskas’ work is but one example of how the chemical industry has manipulated scientific findings to promote the widespread use of flame retardants and downplay the health risks, a Tribune investigation shows. The industry has twisted research results, ignored findings that run counter to its aims and passed off biased, industry-funded reports as rigorous science.
As a result, the chemical industry successfully distorted the basic knowledge about toxic chemicals that are used in consumer products and linked to serious health problems, including cancer, developmental problems, neurological deficits and impaired fertility. Industry has disseminated misleading research findings so frequently that they essentially have been adopted as fact. They have been cited by consultants, think tanks, regulators and Wikipedia, and have shaped the worldwide debate about the safety of flame retardants….
In reviewing key scientific studies and analyses behind the chemical industry’s most common arguments, the Tribune identified flaws so basic they violate central tenets of science…. In fact, as Babrauskas explicitly noted in his study, research shows that the flame retardants in household furnishings such as sofas and chairs do not slow fire….
The bottom line: Household furniture often contains enough chemicals to pose health threats but not enough to stem fires — “the worst of both possible worlds,” [Babrauskas] said….
Babrauskas, now a consultant, said the industry is being “flat-out deceptive” and should stop misrepresenting his work in order to sell more flame retardants. “I don’t want to be part of anything that willfully and needlessly poisons the planet,” he said….
Part 4: Toxic Roulette: Why do we not learn? 10 May 2012.
The history of Firemaster 550, pieced together through records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights how EPA officials have allowed generation after generation of flame retardants onto the market without thoroughly assessing health risks.
The previously unreleased documents also show how the nation’s chemical safety law, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, gives the government little power to assess or limit dangers from the scores of chemicals added to furniture, electronics, toys, cosmetics and household products.
At a time when consumers clamor for more information about their exposure to toxic substances, the chemical safety law allows manufacturers to sell products without proving they are safe and to treat the formulas as trade secrets. Once health effects are documented, the law makes it almost impossible for the EPA to ban chemicals.
A growing list of critics — including the nation’s leading group of pediatricians and the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress — are calling for a sweeping overhaul of the law. Some compare the situation to Whac-A-Mole, the carnival game where plastic moles keep popping out of holes even after a player smacks one down.
“By the time the scientific community catches up to one chemical, industry moves on to another and they go back to their playbook of delay and denial,” said Deborah Rice, a former EPA toxicologist who works for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention….
When Firemaster 550 replaced penta, its chemical makeup was a mystery to all but the manufacturer and a select group of EPA employees who were sworn to secrecy. That made it difficult for outside scientists to identify its ingredients in the environment and determine if they are harmful. Not until two young, independent chemists revealed the formula of Firemaster 550 did it become clear how far the flame retardant had spread in just a few years’ time….
EPA officials acknowledge they know little, if anything, about the safety of not only Firemaster 550 but most of the other 84,000 industrial compounds in commercial use in the U.S. Unlike Europe, where companies generally are required to prove the safety of their chemicals before use, U.S. law requires manufacturers to submit safety data only if they have it. Most don’t, records show, which forces the EPA to predict whether chemicals will pose health problems by using computer models that the agency admits can fail to identify adverse effects.
The EPA can require studies of new chemicals that it anticipates could affect people’s health — as it did with Firemaster 550 — but this step is rare, and the research doesn’t need to be completed before the chemicals are sold. To ban a chemical already on the market, the EPA must prove that it poses an “unreasonable risk.” Federal courts have established such a narrow definition of “unreasonable” that the government couldn’t even ban asbestos, a well-documented carcinogen that has killed thousands of people who suffered devastating lung diseases….
Part 5: Testing Mattresses: Chemicals in the crib. By Patricia Callahan and Michael Hawthorne. 28 December 2012.
Three popular brands of baby mattresses that were marketed in recent months to families and day care centers contained toxic flame retardants linked to increased cancer risk, according to laboratory tests conducted for the Chicago Tribune. One member of that family of chemicals, known collectively as chlorinated tris, was removed from children’s pajamas over cancer concerns a generation ago.
In May, the Tribune published its “Playing With Fire” series, which revealed how flame retardants are commonly found in American homes as a result of a decades-long campaign of deception by the tobacco and chemical industries. Among other things, the leading manufacturers of flame retardants created a phony consumer group that stoked the public’s fear of fire to protect and expand the use of their chemicals in furniture, electronics and other products.
Part 6: Flawed Study: Propping up the chemical industry. Doubts cast on new research touted by fire-retardant lobby. By Sam Roe. 30 December 2012.
On the defensive over toxic flame retardants, the chemical industry turns to the questionable conclusions of a friendly scientist.
Under attack since May for relying on flawed studies to justify the use of toxic flame retardants in furniture and household products, the chemical industry has turned to a familiar tactic: It has begun pointing to a new scientific paper. Industry representatives have touted the paper in news releases, before lawmakers and in a video shown to policy makers. They have also shared the paper with two U.S. senators, who cited it during congressional hearings.
But the new paper reaches unsupported conclusions and misleads the public, much like previous studies embraced by industry, a Tribune investigation shows. The paper’s author is Matthew Blais, a scientist and chemical industry adviser who had never previously written a paper about flame retardants.
Additional coverage: Clyde Haberman, “A Flame Retardant That Came With Its Own Threat to Health.” The New York Times, Retro Report, 3 May 2015.
If you closely examine your living room couch, your favorite easy chair or your child’s car seat, the odds are strong that you will find upholstery that is filled with polyurethane foam treated with a chemical flame retardant. Some may find that comforting: Isn’t it desirable to hold an accidental fire at bay, one caused by, say, a burning cigarette or faulty electrical wiring? But studies show that many flame-resistant chemicals loom as potential health menaces, associated with cancers, memory loss, lower I.Q.s and impaired motor skills in children, to name a few woes. Isn’t it just as desirable, some would also say, to keep such substances out of people’s lives?
On the surface, this may seem like a struggle between worthy goals of equal merit: forestalling household fires on one hand, preventing toxic contamination on the other. But this new installment of Retro Report, a series of video documentaries examining major news stories of the past and their consequences, suggests that the surface impression presents a false equivalence. Health risks linked to some of these chemical compounds have been growing while their fire-deterring value has been called into serious doubt….
Regulating chemicals has always been a thorny proposition. More than 80,000 of them are registered for use in the United States, including flame retardants, but federal inspectors have tested only a tiny fraction….