After years of being unable to stick together to pass a bill designed to require manufacturers to report and rid children’s products of toxic chemicals, the Senate Democrats, including Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose -- a former opponent -- passed Senate Bill 478 on a party-line, 18-11 vote.
The vote followed an emotional speech by chief sponsor Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, who choked up when considering the effects ubiquitous, hazardous chemicals in our everyday environment may have had on the development of his son, who struggles with autism.
Edwards said the federal government, bowing to industry pressure, has failed to protect consumers from these chemicals, compelling progressive states like Oregon to take the lead: “The federal regulatory framework has failed to ban asbestos -- a known carcinogen,” let alone the numerous endocrine disruptors and chemicals that alter human development, which regularly pass through from Chinese factories onto store shelves, he said.
The Toxic-Free Kids Act, SB 478, requires manufacturers with more than $5 million in sales to report their known use of 66 chemicals of concerns in children’s products -- mirroring Washington’s law -- and then begin phasing out those chemicals, starting in 2023, for safer alternatives, which will put Oregon ahead of its northern neighbor.
Manufacturers and trade associations will be able to avoid phasing out the chemicals if they can show that the toxins are in low enough levels to be considered safe or if the chemicals have no way of coming into direct contact with a child. The chemicals only need to be phased out if they are designed for use on the skin, in the child’s mouth or for children under 3 years old.
All Senate Republicans opposed the bill, and their position was led by Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli of John Day and Sen. Chuck Thomsen of Hood River.
Ferrioli attempted to move the bill back to the Senate Rules Committee to strip SB 478 of the phase-out provision in the law, leaving just the reporting requirements required by a Washington law, a motion that failed on a party-line vote.
“Washington has taken a thorough and thoughtful approach,” Ferrioli said.
“A good compromise would have gone to the Washington program,” Thomsen said.
Ferrioli and Thomsen’s speeches were entirely insincere. Both of them were responsible for killing earlier measures in 2013 and 2014 when the Democrats did offer such a compromise, which by all accounts failed by one vote. According to Edwards, the only reason the Republicans and industry lobbyists supported a reporting law now was because they knew the Democrats had the votes for the more robust phase-out law.
Johnson’s newfound support for the Toxic-Free Kids Act surprised even the bill’s chief advocates, including Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland, and Angela Crowley-Koch of the Oregon Environmental Council, who said she did not know ahead of the vote that Johnson would approve SB 478.
The moderate Scappoose senator’s opposition to the Toxic-Free Kids Act and other progressive priorities had been so infamous that Democratic activists campaigned for a “Betsy-proof majority” in the Senate, in their successful effort to reach a Democratic supermajority.
Keny-Guyer has worked on the legislation since taking office in 2012, passing the House with a triumphant, two-thirds majority in 2013 only to die in the Senate when Johnson joined the Republicans, who locked arms in opposition to kill the bill twice. But the issue has been on the burner for Democrats at least as far back as 2009, when Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, introduced a bill aimed at banning hazardous substances in a wider array of consumer products.
SB 478 heads to the House for a vote Friday where it has Republican as well as Democratic support.
Editor's Note: The original article misidentified the representative of the Oregon Environmental Council, Angela Crowley-Koch.
