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EcoBirth-Women for Earth and Birth

Uniting the earth and birth movements for the well-being of our world

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The EPA has made it clear that current regulations don’t give them the tools to protect Americans from serious health problems

This is the foundational message that we should all understand, from Safer Chemicals/Healthy Families http://www.saferchemicals.org/.

I just sent this to Congress, we must be active and informed!

The EPA has made it clear that current regulations don’t give them the tools to protect Americans from the serious health problems associated with toxic chemicals, and the Obama Administration has asked Congress to enact swift reform. The Administration’s stance reflects the concerns of millions of Americans like me, who are finding it hard to limit my family’s exposure to toxic chemicals.

Please support legislation that will soon be introduced to reform and modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Give the EPA the tools they need to put common sense limits on toxic chemicals in every day products.

Serious reform is long overdue. Toxic chemicals have already caused long-term harm to our nation’s health. The chemicals found in every day products have been linked to escalating public health problems like obesity, dramatic increases in chronic diseases like cancer, and unprecedented changes to our fertility.

Chemical-related health trends are making a serious impact on our economy, too. Peer reviewed studies show that reforming the nation’s chemical laws will result in annual savings of $5 billion in health care costs. These savings would come from a decline in chronic diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, asthma and learning disabilities.

Additionally, many of our most significant trading partners are implementing stronger chemicals protection policies than we have in the U.S., putting our economy at a competitive disadvantage in a global marketplace that is rapidly gaining awareness of the problems associated with runaway toxic chemicals.

TSCA is now 33 years old and has never been modernized. Outdated technologies and unsafe chemicals have created costs too great to bear to sustain our quality of life, with broad implications for our health care system and our economy.

There are 82,000 chemicals available for use in the U.S. yet only about 200 chemicals have been assessed for safety. Only 5 chemicals have been restricted based on health and safety concerns.

The time has come to give the federal government enough authority to require that chemicals be tested for safety before they are put into the products we use every day.

As your constituent, I urge you to support legislation that will:

1. Take immediate action to stop the use of the most dangerous toxic chemicals;

2. Give the EPA the power to assess the safety of all chemicals so that the health of all people and the environment, especially the most vulnerable subpopulations, including children, workers, and pregnant women will be protected;

3. Improve the right to know about toxic chemicals by allowing the public, workers, and the marketplace to have full access to information about the health hazards from chemicals and the way in which government safety decisions are made.

Legislation to modernize and update TSCA will be introduced soon. I urge you to support this effort to lead us into a new era of safer chemicals and healthy families.

Thank you for your leadership.
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Molly Arthur's Maternal Lines digital story from molly arthur on Vimeo.

We women can face the pain and grief we have for our suffering Mother Earth and reclaim our story of creation and redemption with the power and beauty intimately held in our body’s cells from our maternal lines since the beginning of the cosmos. Our existential and communal grief heals within the loving gathering of our feminine compassion, connecting us to the truth and strength of our Mother Earth and all our kin. We start with Molly’s Personal Environmental Story-to explore the birth stories and places and times of ourselves, our mothers and grandmothers.Using the stories of our own maternal lines, with sharing, active listening and intention, we call on our ancestors, our inner wisdom and the shared circle to witness our story with compassion. Using ritual, song, movement, and sharing of our truths, in community and powerful circle as well as spending time on the land - we can acknowledge the oppression in our lives, feeling it in our bodies, grieving it, transforming it and ourselves in a safe, loving space. Our healing path connects our sacred lineage from the womb of our Mother Earth to integrate our inner and outer lives and discover our place in the connected caring cosmos. We are a part of a continuum of sacredness, lifeforce, divine energy including our Ancestors back to the stuff of the stars. We can reclaim our cells, our lineage and our legacy to the future generations. Like in birth labor, we must yield to our bodies innate knowing, to progress, to open, to birth our love. With our active surrender to fierce compassion we can restore our connection to the natural world and our own inner wisdom. We can drop our obsessive addictions to control and return to our healing, caring, befriending tendencies- innate for us nurturers. And then we can repair, regenerate, and renew our culture for tenderness and kindness, naturally embodied by us. We will be able to guard and protect ours and all descendents - becoming their Beloved Ancestors- by asking - What is possible now to transform our world for Future Generations?

Molly Arthur of EcoBirth- My Personal Environmental Story November 2012 from molly arthur on Vimeo.

Why EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story
EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story will help women tell their life story by considering the two primary environments- place and birth- for themselves, their mothers and their maternal grandmothers. Through this process each participant will come to realize the hazards in their environmental genealogy and realize the healing in telling their own story. And they will be empowered to affect the changes that are necessary for our Mother Earth and our children and grandchildren to thrive.
Imagine looking back to your grandmother's and mother's birth time to figure out what environmental influences you might have inherited? And have passed onto your children and grandchildren? Would you wonder what was in the air, water and food in their lives- and look twice at what diseases, birth defects, addictions there are in your family?