A group of eight Maine women recently set out for Washington, D.C., to talk with Maine’s senators and representatives about fixing the nation’s broken chemical safety system. I was proud to be one of them.

We joined more than 200 Americans from 40 states for the National Stroller Brigade. We came together because we want to protect our families and communities from toxic chemicals found in everyday products. Three of us were from Lewiston-Auburn, and we brought more than 2,100 signatures from Maine people calling on Congress to pass meaningful reform now.

In the 37 years since the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1978 was passed, 80,000 chemicals have entered the market and many of those have entered our homes and our bodies. Only 200 have been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency, with only five restricted or banned.

The EPA is so hamstrung by the broken chemical safety system, it couldn’t even ban asbestos. It cannot protect Americans from chemicals that contribute to cancer, asthma, learning disabilities and reproductive system problems.

This is my concern as a teacher of non-toxic housekeeping. Common knowledge of how to safely clean our homes, care for our families and ourselves has been replaced by advertisements for unnecessary toxic household cleaners. Chlorine and ammonia are volatile poisons; volatile meaning they evaporate easily and are often ingredients in household cleaners sold in spray bottles, so breathing them is unavoidable.

There are non-toxic solutions for removing germs from our homes but the chemical industry has gained the public’s trust in the poisons through advertising.

For generations, advertising taught us life is better with their chemistry and the chemical industry spends a lot of money lobbying elected officials to make sure their industry isn’t properly regulated.

We’re beginning to see the truth.

Unregulated chemistry increases the public’s health care costs and, more importantly, results in uncountable lives being impacted by illness, reproductive system problems and learning disabilities. Because children and pregnant women are especially vulnerable to the effects of toxic chemicals, we’re not only harming ourselves, we’re harming our future.

A bill in the U.S. Senate, the Chemical Safety Improvement Act, has gained bipartisan support because many elected leaders have gotten the message from their constituents that chemical safety reform is needed. And just recently, the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing on CSIA.

Unfortunately, CSIA doesn’t create meaningful reform — and in some ways would actually make taking action on toxic chemicals even more difficult. To pass that bill, as it is, will only delay real reform, perhaps for many years.

There is still time to make CSIA better — and Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King can help. We need them to ask their colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee to:

1) Protect the most vulnerable of us: children, pregnant women and people who live or work with high exposures;

2) Remove the red tape from the EPA that prevents the regulation of notoriously bad chemicals;

3) Allow states to take action. We need to make sure that states such as Maine can continue to be leaders in protecting children from toxic chemicals — as we have done with protecting babies from BPA.

I learned from my Stroller Brigade experience that democracy doesn’t happen by itself. The chemical industry lobby is powerful, persuasive and persistent. Poison for profit made it strong and the industry has had its way with the public and elected officials throughout the 20th century.

We, the people, must be more powerful, more persuasive and more persistent now. Our democratic system provides us the means to be heard.

I ask Sens. Collins and King to help pass meaningful reform. The chemical industry is wrong: regulation does not squash business. It protects the innocent from disreputable businesses and provides fertile ground for forward-thinking businesses to grow.

There are new fortunes to be made in safe, non-toxic chemistry. And, most important of all, the health and safety of our families, our communities and future generations depends on our elected leaders taking meaningful action now.

Betty Allen of Auburn is a small business owner and was one of eight Maine women who traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Stroller Brigade on Oct. 30.

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