A broad coalition of labor, health, environmental and faith-based organizations is calling for tougher federal regulation of toxic chemicals and the public's exposure to them.

A report released nationwide today by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition seeks to rally support for about-to-be-introduced legislation reforming the 34-year-old federal Toxic Substances Control Act by highlighting a multitude of scientific studies that link toxic chemical exposure to the rise of chronic diseases, including breast cancer and childhood cancers, learning and developmental disorders, reproductive problems, Parkinson's and asthma.

The report said that new health-based regulations to ensure chemical safety could conservatively reduce the incidence of such chronic diseases by 1/10th of 1 percent and reduce direct health care costs by $5 billion a year in the U.S. and almost $200 million in Pennsylvania.

"A lot of diseases are linked in part to the toxic chemicals that saturate our everyday lives," Maureen Swanson, national coordinator of the Healthy Children Project and the Pittsburgh-based Learning Disabilities Association of America, said at a news conference in United Steelworkers headquarters Downtown. "With an updated toxic chemical law we could all be healthier and wealthier."

Dr. Maryann Donovan, associate director of research services for the University of Pittsburgh's Cancer Institute and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology, said that 75 percent of cancers are linked to chemical exposures in the environment, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Since the federal Toxic Substances Control Act became law in 1976, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has required testing on just 200 of the 83,000 chemicals in common use and issued regulations for only five.

New toxic chemical legislation strengthening the chemical testing requirements is scheduled for introduction in February by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, (D-N.J.) and Rep. Bobby Rush, (D-Ill.).

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