Consumer Blog

Link to full release: EXCERPT FOLLOWS: U.S. House Passes PIRG-Backed Chemical Security Legislation on 230-193 vote (YEA is the public interest vote). Safer chemicals measure will protect communities and reduce risk of terrorist attack. More...

AP Story. Excerpt from our full release WASHINGTON, November 6 — The U.S. House of Representatives today passed legislation to protect American communities from industrial and water facilities that use and store large amounts of highly hazardous chemicals. The House rejected efforts to gut the bill’s requirement that the most dangerous facilities implement safer technologies. The Chemical and Water Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2868) will require thousands of facilities where a toxic release endangers the surrounding community to assess their ability to “reduce the consequences of a terrorist attack” by switching to safer alternative chemicals or processes, and authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and Environmental Protection Agency to require use of those alternatives at the nation’s most dangerous facilities where feasible and cost-effective. “With this historic vote, the House said ‘Yes, we can’ protect American communities in the face of the ‘can’t do’ rhetoric of the chemical lobby,” said U.S. PIRG Public Health Advocate Liz Hitchcock. “Reducing the use of dangerous chemicals will make communities safer while also reducing the threat that chemical stockpiles become terrorist targets.”