Quest to eliminate chemical flame retardants from Californian homes

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Quest to eliminate chemical flame retardants from Californian homes is far from over, experts say

Some argue flame retardant insulation is toxic and unnecessary, but it’s still required by California building codes

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/15/flame-retardants-insulation-furniture-building-code-foam

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A California regulation effectively eliminated the need for chemical flame retardants in furniture in November 2013. Two years later, though, experts say the quest to eliminate the retardants from the home is far from over.

While flame retardant chemicals have been taken out of furniture, many of the same chemicals are still required in building insulation and other products. Some of these compounds – particularly halogenated and organophosphorous flame retardants, which are commonly used in a variety of consumer and industrial products – have raised a host of health concerns. The US Environmental Protection Agency, among others, has linked them to a variety of health conditions, including endocrine disruption, reproductive toxicity, and cancer.

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“The change to the furniture standard is huge and we’ll all be healthier as a result,” says Arlene Blum, founder of the Green Science Policy Institute and longtime leader of the charge for Technical Bulletin 117, the regulation that removed the flame retardant requirement for furniture in California. “On the other hand, there are still other uses of concern, particularly building insulation and electronics.

“The same materials that make buildings really energy efficient – polystyrene, polyurethane and polyisocyanurate – are treated with flame retardants that are either known to be harmful or appear to be,” Blum says. What’s more, she adds, the increased focus on energy conservation is leading to an increased use of such chemicals. “As our buildings get more and more energy efficient, we’re using twice as much insulation, so twice as much flame retardant chemicals,” she says.

But what of the fire protection that comes from these chemicals? Blum argues there isn’t any real benefit. “Many walls are designed to be thermal barriers, so they can withstand 15 minutes of flashover fire,” she says. “By that time, the flame retardant really makes no difference.”

Changing the standard

In October 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bulletin that required the state fire marshal to look into updating the state building code to enable the safe use of insulation that does not contain chemical flame retardants. Blum says efforts are underway to completely eliminate the use of these chemicals in areas where there’s very little fire risk. “Between the foundation and the soil, for example, there’s zero fire risk, but chemical flame retardants used in insulation there could leech into the ground water and soil,” she says.

It’s not clear whether flame retardant chemicals are really unsafe. The question of whether or not they migrate beyond walled-off enclosures to expose building inhabitants hasn’t yet been studied. But those who advocate for eliminating fire retardant chemicals from building insulation are not only concerned about their toxicity in the home, but also about their overall life cycles – including their manufacture and disposal.

According to the European Commission and the US Environmental Protection Agency, insulation is the primary environmental source of hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), a flame retardant chemical and persistent organic pollutant. The Green Science Policy Institute estimates that 85% of the global supply of HBCD is used on foam plastic insulation.

 

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Globally, the chemical is being phased out due to research indicating it is toxic to the environment. According to the EPA, HBCD is persistent in the environment and bioaccumulates in living organisms; it is “highly toxic to aquatic organisms” and also presents human health concerns based on animal test results indicating potential reproductive, developmental and neurological effects.

One option is to replace HBCD with a less toxic choice. According to the EPA’s Design for the Environment program, the best candidate is butadiene styrene brominated copolymer. Because it is a polymer, the chemicals are bonded together and kept in place, which means there’s less likelihood of flame retardant chemicals migrating out of the insulation and into dust, air, water or soil.

But while that replacement is preferable, it still isn’t a complete solution to the toxicity problem. The EPA’s brief on the material says: “Its long term behavior in the environment is not currently known.”

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Industry in the hot seat

The insulation industry is quick to defend its chemicals. “During a fire, every second counts and flame retardants in foam insulation are an important line of defense when it comes to fire safety,” Jared Blum, president of the Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association, wrote in an op-ed around the time AB 127 passed. “In fact, a study conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Materials Flammability Group found that products treated with flame retardants provide extra, valuable time to escape a building compared to foam insulation products not treated with flame retardants.”

But some activists question whether industry resistance to anti-flame retardant legislation is aimed at saving lives – or saving a profitable product line. The total US insulation industry is predicted to hit $10.3bn by 2017. According to Avery Lindeman, deputy director of the Green Science Policy Institute, one reason for the opposition is that, in many cases, the same groups that manufacture foam plastic insulation also manufacture the flame retardant chemicals used in it. “There’s really no incentive there for them to want the codes to change,” she says.

One problem, critics say, is that the circumstances surrounding fire safety regulations have changed. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was legal to leave insulation completely unprotected in the home. Because of that, California changed its code requirements, which remain in place today, forcing builders to place insulation behind a thermal barrier, where it would be protected from fire.

Another issue is testing. As insulation requirements changed, some manufacturers incorrectly claimed that their products were fire-safe – a move that led the Federal Trade Commission to demand improved fire-testing standards. In response, manufacturers adopted the Steiner Tunnel test, which involves mounting a sample of test material in a noncombustible tunnel that is then lit by two gas burners. A ventilation system blows air and combustibles through the tunnel, and flame spread and smoke development are measured.

The trouble is, the Steiner tunnel test is not meant to measure the ignitability of a material, nor is it intended for thermoplastic materials that could melt and drip or for materials with slow flame spread properties. When it became clear that the test couldn’t ensure the safety of uncovered foam insulation, California instituted the thermal barrier requirement in 1979, which requires that insulation be protected by a barrier wall, typically half-inch-thick gypsum wallboard.

Still, Lindeman claims, the insulation industry clings to the Steiner test. “The tunnel test was developed by industry, in collaboration with Underwriters Laboratory and the National Bureau of Standards [now the National Institute of Standards and Technology] to demonstrate that their product was safe,” Lindeman says. “So even though they have agreed in the working group that the test is flawed, the industry is unwilling to publicly admit that this test they’ve been using for the last four decades doesn’t work for foam plastics.”

According to Charles Cottrell, vice president of technical services for the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association, the industry does not have an official position regarding the Steiner Tunnel Test. Nonetheless, he has a strong opinion about it. “In my opinion the test can provide very valuable information regarding the fire performance of building materials, but those conducting the tests and interpreting the results of the tests need to be aware of its limitations,” he says. “The test may not provide useful information for materials that melt, drip or delaminate and the persons conducting the testing and evaluating the results should be careful about using just this test for evaluating the fire performance to some types of materials.”

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Industry sets its own standards

Following the passage of AB 127 and Brown’s call for investigation into updated building codes, the California state fire marshal convened a working group to make recommendations. However, Lindeman says, the first step – a review of the available literature regarding the code – didn’t happen. “[it was] partly because of the really broad spectrum of opinions within the working group and the lack of objective technical expertise,” she says.

The working group consisted of representatives from several of the state’s fire departments, scientists, green chemistry advocates, representatives from standards organizations like Underwriters and industry representatives. It produced a report in December 2014, which the state fire marshal now needs to finalize, adding a cover letter that indicates the next steps that should be taken.

From here, the push for new fire code requirements could go one of two ways. The fire marshal’s office could recommend updates to the code, which would need to be submitted to the California Building Standards Commission by July 2015. Alternately, it could recommend the establishment of a second working group, which would conduct comparison tests and do additional research.

It looks like the second route is more likely. “If the state fire marshal’s finalized report came out this week and included very simple proposed code changes, we could maybe see updated codes in the next couple of years, but it’s looking very unlikely given that the July deadline is looming and we haven’t seen anything yet,” Lindeman says.

 

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The chemical industry's fake grass-roots lobbying for fire retardants

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-a-look-inside-the-chemical-industry-20150515-column.html

Grant D. Gillham stepped to the microphone in a California State Senate hearing chamber on April 13 and spoke out in favor of a bill mandating the labeling of children's products containing flame retardant chemicals.

What made Gillham's appearance notable was that for years, he had been in charge of a chemical industry effort to kill such bills -- in fact, one that had targeted numerous measures in Sacramento.

"Over a five-year period of time we killed 58 of 60 bills like this throughout the country," he said. But now, he said, "I don't believe the industry has the science to support their claims that these products are safe and that they work."

That moment may have been the final coda to the credibility of Citizens for Fire Safety, the ostensibly grass-roots organization Gillham had headed.

I don't believe the industry has the science to support their claims that these products are safe and that they work.

- Grant Gillham, former chemical industry lobbyist

Set up in 2007 by the chemical industry to lobby against flame-retardant regulations, the group described itself as "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."

A 2012 investigation by The Times' sister newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, and also published by The Times, exposed Citizens for Fire Safety's industry pedigree as the offspring of three flame-retardant manufacturers.

Now a new report by the Center for Public Integrity adds to the record with evidence that Citizens for Fire Safety worked intimately with the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry's lobbying arm, which has always disavowed any affiliation with Citizens for Fire Safety. "Neither ACC staff nor resources were used to support activities undertaken by the group," its chief executive, Cal Dooley, told a Maine legislator in 2012, according to a letter cited in the expose.

The CPI's report sheds new light on a lobbying and public information campaign waged for years by the chemical industry to defeat regulations on retardants. It shows how a big industry can cloak its lobbying power as grass-roots citizen activism.

The chemicals at issue have been infused into bedding, upholstery and other household goods for decades on the presumption that they can prevent house fires.

But scientific evidence suggests that they're easily absorbed through the skin and work their way into breathable household dust as treated fabrics deteriorate; according to one study, 97% of Americans have traces of the compounds in their blood. Laboratory studies suggest they're associated with cancer, thyroid and neurological problems, and other health effects. There are also doubts about their efficacy in preventing fires.

The ACC's membership is a Who's Who of the global chemical industry, including Chevron, Dow Chemical, DuPont and the three firms directly involved in starting Citizens for Fire Safety -- Albemarle, Chemtura and ICL, or Israel Chemicals Ltd.

The ACC says its role is overstated by the CPI investigation. "We disagree with the characterization of the relationship in the CPI story," Anne Kolton, the council's spokeswoman, told me Friday. "While we were certainly aware of one another, there was not any support or coordination between the groups."

But as Gillham disclosed in a letter last month to California State Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), chairman of the Senate Committee on Business, Professions, and Economic Development, Citizens for Fire Safety was all but founded in the ACC's Sacramento office at a meeting in August 2007. The meeting launched what he called "a six-year relationship with the American Chemistry Council," which exercised "oversight" of his "grass-roots public relations campaign" to defeat legislation banning chemical flame retardants.

When Gillham, a veteran tobacco lobbyist, urged his employers to revisit their scientific data on safety and efficacy in the aftermath of the 2012 Tribune investigation, he says, he was fired.

By then the "citizens" group had made its mark. "Over the past eight years, we had five different bills [to regulate retardants] and they opposed every one," says Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

The organization spent lavishly across the country and in California. Gillham told CPI that it spent $22 million on lobbying and advertising to defeat a California measure in 2007. California lobbying records show it paid more than $4 million to Sacramento lobbyists from 2007 through 2012.

The industry's campaign included heart-wrenching testimony from a prominent burn specialist, Dr. David Heimbach of Seattle, who presented stories of children burned and killed in fires preventable by flame retardants. The Tribune established that those stories were fabricated.

But they met the goal of killing anti-retardant regulations. "There was no hope to pass a bill when you saw pictures of burned babies," says Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group and a long-term campaigner for stricter regulations on the chemicals. "But there were no such babies."

Heimbach later gave up his medical license under the threat of disciplinary proceedings in Washington.

The California legislature finally passed a measure in 2014 mandating warning labels on upholstered furniture with flame retardants. The state fire code also has been amended to remove a mandate that household fabrics be treated with the chemicals. The measure on which Gillham spoke last month, also sponsored by Leno, would add labeling requirements to treated infant and child products.

Meanwhile, the industry is training its firepower on Capitol Hill, where it is pushing legislation to shift regulation of fire retardants to the federal government. Cook of EWG says the effect would be to force states to accept looser federal rules. "The goal of the sponsors is clearly to preempt state regulation," he says.

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