Our Vision
It’s common sense. To be healthy, every person needs:
- Clean drinking water
- Safe products
- Healthy communities
We all have a part to play in creating a healthy world. Safer States does its part by uniting around strong safety standards that prevent big businesses from polluting and protect people from physical and economic harm.
The Problem
Harmful chemicals are making us sick
Thousands of chemicals in the products we use every day end up in our environment, our homes,and our bodies. Exposure to toxic chemicals raises the risk of diseases like cancer, infertility, and learning disabilities.
We eat them. Chemicals used in food packaging and production leach into our food and into us.
We drink them. Harmful chemicals from manufacturing of cooking, cleaning, personal care products, and old plumbing contaminate drinking water supplies.
We breathe them. Toxics like flame retardants in furniture and electronics as well as solvents in cleaners and building materials are found in the air we breathe—both in our neighborhoods and inside our homes.
We Are All Responsible For Public Health
We have the right to be safe in our homes. We can all do our part by making healthy choices, but none of us can protect our families from toxics we can’t see and don’t know are there.
Corporate polluters must face the consequences for their impact on public health and safety. The chemical industry and companies that make and sell products should be held responsible for their pollution.
Safer States and our partners work to advance common-sense policies that hold all of us to our responsibilities, making human health and safety our top priority.
Solutions and Successes
For more than 20 years, Safer States’ partners have led the nation with protective policies that reduce our exposure to harmful chemicals:
- A ban on top-priority chemicals in toys and baby bottles, leading to national policies for BPA and phthalates.
- A change in policy to shift the furniture market away from using toxic flame retardants.
- A ban on lead, cadmium and other heavy metals in children’s products.
- Disclosure policies to better understand where and when toxic chemicals are used.
- Identifying toxic chemicals and mandating the use of safer alternatives.
- Holding national retailers responsible for policies to eliminate harmful chemicals from the products they sell.
