"Clearly, that would be a very logical assumption that someone
is out there protecting us, somebody is making sure the
chemicals that would harm our bodies or our environment wouldn't
be in common products," says Debbie Raphael, Director of
California's Department of Toxic Substances Control. As a
result, about 83,000 chemicals are not routinely tested for
safety. Raphael says California's new law affects every consumer
product that may have any of more than 12-hundred "chemicals of
concern." "These are chemicals widely understood throughout the
world to cause problems like cancer, like reproductive harm,
polluting our waters, polluting our air, those kinds of
chemicals becomes our list of chemicals of concern," says
Raphael. The prospect of regulating so many chemicals is
daunting, so the department will target five chemicals in five
products to begin with. The list could include could
formaldehyde in carpet, cadmium in jewelry, ammonia in cleaning
products; the department hasn't decided. "Basically the depa