After reading the May 26th chemical industry commentary by Randy Dearth and Cal Dooley praising the 2006 chemical security law, I thought your readers might be interested in the story behind this statute.

This law was enacted instead of comprehensive legislation even though comprehensive bills were adopted by the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees in 2006. What Congress passed was a 740 word "rider" on the Homeland Security spending bill that exempted thousands of chemical facilities from regulation.

The law also prohibited Homeland Security from requiring chemical plants to use safer chemical technologies such as safer liquids instead of poison gases. Today 300 U.S. chemical plants put more than 100 million Americans at risk. All of them have safer options.

In a March 2006 floor statement Sen. Barack Obama said, "by employing safer technologies, we can reduce the attractiveness of chemical plants as a target. ... Each one of these methods reduces the danger that chemical plants pose to our communities and makes them less appealing targets for terrorists." The chemical lobby opposed Mr. Obama and others in Congress and has succeeded in forestalling comprehensive legislation since 9/11.

Hopefully Mr. Obama's wisdom will be incorporated in the comprehensive legislation that is finally beginning to move this summer.

-- RICK HIND
Legislative director, Greenpeace Washington, D.C.

I was pleased to read about current local initiatives to reduce health-care costs in Harold Miller's "Regional Insights: Reducing Health-Care Costs Without Rationing" (June 7). As Mr. Miller correctly states, reducing hospital costs must be a part of health-care reform as it is "the largest source of health-care spending growth in recent years." He proposed three ways to reduce spending, including reducing "the use of unnecessary surgeries and procedures," such as Cesarean sections, and said "overuse of these procedures can result in worse outcomes for patients." He cites reducing costs and improving outcomes in labor, delivery and newborn care as opportunities for improving outcomes and reducing costs, since it is "the largest category of hospital spending for people under age 65."

Health-care reform needs to include support for licensed and free-standing birth centers that offer a healthy, cost-effective alternative to hospitals. A first step toward ensuring the viability and accessibility of birth centers is to pass H.R. 2358, which will mandate Medicare and Medicaid to reimburse birth centers across the country so that birth centers can play more of a role in improving outcomes and reducing health-care costs.

-- CHRISTINE HAAS
Executive Director
The Midwife Center for Birth & Women's Health, Strip District