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3 The Law’s Contribution to Health Protections
Administrative health laws can prevent/reduce toxicity-caused chronic diseases,
while personal injury (or the tort law) can support treatment and redress for diseases
caused by others (but I do not discuss this).
Administrative health laws exhibit two generic strategies that might protect
people in a community from diseases caused by toxic substances.
In the U.S. laws for drugs (1962) and pesticides (1968) require products to
undergo routine premarket toxicity testing with a battery of tests and agency review
before they can enter commerce (U.S. Congress 1987). These laws cover only about
10–20% of chemical creations. If premarket laws function well, they approximate
the primordial prevention of risks of diseases.
Postmarket laws seek to protect citizens from toxicants among general chemicals
by permitting chemical creations to enter commerce with no legally required routine
testing or approval under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. This covers about
80–90% of chemical creations. Any protection from this law depends in part upon
whether the U.S. Environmental protection Agency (EPA) is able to discern toxic
properties of products entering commerce when it has minimal to nearly nonexistent information provided by a chemical manufacturer (toxicity data is not
required) and then asking for additional data if it seems needed to ensure a product’s
safety. The law also assumed that risk assessments post-exposure could be quickly
conducted to identify toxic risks so they could be reduced or removed before (too
many) people were harmed. These legal assumptions were clearly mistaken (Cranor
2017a). Postmarket laws have permitted citizens to be contaminated by more than
300 toxic substances (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC 2019).
Pregnant women are contaminated with up to forty-three toxic substances (Woodruff
et al. 2011) and children are born with toxicants in their bodies (Cranor 2011).
Moreover, identifiable people have been harmed and had their lifetime
opportunities truncated or eliminated altogether because of exposures to toxicants.
At age 47 Brian Milward contracted a rare form of leukemia, promyelocytic
leukemia, caused by benzene, a known carcinogen, used as a solvent in fluids he
applied as a refrigerator repairman (Milward v. Acuity Specialty Products 2011).
His disease, chemotherapy, diabetes, and a rare bowel disorder left him at age 57,
“with ‘absolutely ridiculous’ fatigue” (Lombardi 2014). He had to retire and take
disability with greatly diminished opportunities. He couldn’t do what he loves:
repair racecars, work in his yard, or even play with his grandchildren. “It just sucks
when you get a cancer like this,” he said (Lombardi 2014). The companies creating
products with benzene and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration
failed to protect him from harm, substantially reducing his lifetime opportunities.
Hairdresser Sandy Guest used Brazilian Blowout to straighten her clients’ hair.
It was “loaded with formaldehyde” and she died of leukemia at age 55 (Morris
2015b). Her death was a preventable tragedy: from 1981 to 2011 seventeen human
studies revealed that formaldehyde caused nasopharyngeal and sinonasal cancers,
with some showing it caused myeloid cancers, but no federal agency protected
C. F. Cranor
3 The Law’s Contribution to Health Protections
Administrative health laws can prevent/reduce toxicity-caused chronic diseases,
while personal injury (or the tort law) can support treatment and redress for diseases
caused by others (but I do not discuss this).
Administrative health laws exhibit two generic strategies that might protect
people in a community from diseases caused by toxic substances.
In the U.S. laws for drugs (1962) and pesticides (1968) require products to
undergo routine premarket toxicity testing with a battery of tests and agency review
before they can enter commerce (U.S. Congress 1987). These laws cover only about
10–20% of chemical creations. If premarket laws function well, they approximate
the primordial prevention of risks of diseases.
Postmarket laws seek to protect citizens from toxicants among general chemicals
by permitting chemical creations to enter commerce with no legally required routine
testing or approval under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. This covers about
80–90% of chemical creations. Any protection from this law depends in part upon
whether the U.S. Environmental protection Agency (EPA) is able to discern toxic
properties of products entering commerce when it has minimal to nearly nonexistent information provided by a chemical manufacturer (toxicity data is not
required) and then asking for additional data if it seems needed to ensure a product’s
safety. The law also assumed that risk assessments post-exposure could be quickly
conducted to identify toxic risks so they could be reduced or removed before (too
many) people were harmed. These legal assumptions were clearly mistaken (Cranor
2017a). Postmarket laws have permitted citizens to be contaminated by more than
300 toxic substances (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC 2019).
Pregnant women are contaminated with up to forty-three toxic substances (Woodruff
et al. 2011) and children are born with toxicants in their bodies (Cranor 2011).
Moreover, identifiable people have been harmed and had their lifetime
opportunities truncated or eliminated altogether because of exposures to toxicants.
At age 47 Brian Milward contracted a rare form of leukemia, promyelocytic
leukemia, caused by benzene, a known carcinogen, used as a solvent in fluids he
applied as a refrigerator repairman (Milward v. Acuity Specialty Products 2011).
His disease, chemotherapy, diabetes, and a rare bowel disorder left him at age 57,
“with ‘absolutely ridiculous’ fatigue” (Lombardi 2014). He had to retire and take
disability with greatly diminished opportunities. He couldn’t do what he loves:
repair racecars, work in his yard, or even play with his grandchildren. “It just sucks
when you get a cancer like this,” he said (Lombardi 2014). The companies creating
products with benzene and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration
failed to protect him from harm, substantially reducing his lifetime opportunities.
Hairdresser Sandy Guest used Brazilian Blowout to straighten her clients’ hair.
It was “loaded with formaldehyde” and she died of leukemia at age 55 (Morris
2015b). Her death was a preventable tragedy: from 1981 to 2011 seventeen human
studies revealed that formaldehyde caused nasopharyngeal and sinonasal cancers,
with some showing it caused myeloid cancers, but no federal agency protected
C. F. Cranor