Toxic-Free Future

🎉 The 2024 Retailer Report Card is here!⠀ ⠀ 🎁 As you plan your holiday shopping, find out if your favorite retailer is committed to selling safer products or if it earned a place in the 2024 Toxic Hall of Shame.⠀ ⠀ 🔍 Using a new grading system called The Four Essential Elements for a Safer Marketplace, we evaluated the largest retailers in the U.S. and Canada and found that most are failing to protect customers from toxic chemicals and plastics in their products and packaging. The average grade was a D+.⠀ ⠀ 👎 Seventeen retailers earned failing grades, including @7eleven, @FiveBelow, @McDonalds, @llflooringofficial, and @sallybeauty. ⠀ ⠀ 🏆 But @apple, @sephora, @target, and @walmart earned top grades, demonstrating that it IS possible for retailers to restrict toxic chemicals and advance safer solutions.⠀ ⠀ 🖥️ As our recent report on recycled black plastics shows, when retailers don’t protect consumers from toxic chemicals and plastics, the results are troubling: toxic chemicals like flame retardants in our cookware, toys, take-out containers, and more. ⠀ ⠀ 👀 Which retailer was most improved? Which sector earned the lowest scores? Which retailers were evaluated for the first time? ⠀ ⠀ Learn more and take action at the link in bio! #MindTheStore⠀

🍣 Toxic chemicals in your plastic take-out sushi tray?! Our peer-reviewed study found toxic flame retardants in black plastic household products including food containers, kitchen utensils, toys, and more. ❓ How did toxic flame retardants, used in #electronics, end up in products like black plastic spatulas? 📺 Since electronics are widely recycled, it's likely that these dangerous chemicals are a result of the dirty plastic #recycling of e-waste. Toxic flame retardants are linked to #cancer, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and reproductive and developmental toxicity. 👶 Finding flame retardants in plastic toys and food-contact items is especially worrisome because studies have shown these chemicals can leach out of kitchen utensils into food, as well as children’s saliva through mouthing of toys. 🍼 Toxic flame retardant chemicals were found in 85% of analyzed plastic products, including the banned substance deca-BDE and its replacements, which were also recently detected in breast milk. To solve this problem, we need strong state and federal laws to ban dangerous chemicals and plastics. 🌎 Join us in telling the U.S. government to pass a strong Global Plastics Treaty by signing our petition today at the link in bio!

❗ Our new report, released today with Material Research, reveals that up to 36 million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride are transported across North American railways at any moment—putting more than three million people at risk.⠀ ⠀ 🥇 The report is the first to uncover the quantities and 📍 map the route 📍of vinyl chloride rail shipments by America's largest producer, OxyVinyls, known for its role in the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. ⠀ ⠀ ⚠️ Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen linked to liver, lung, brain, and breast #cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, and numerous other health problems. As long as dangerous chemicals like vinyl chloride are used to make plastics, communities like East Palestine, Ohio and many others will continue to suffer the impacts.⠀ ⠀ 🚂 We found for the first time, yearly, an estimated 1.5 billion lbs of this dangerous chemical travels nearly 2,000 miles of track, the longest route in the country for rail transport of vinyl chloride.⠀ ⠀ 👷 The chemical is used to make PVC building materials and other products sold at major retailers, like @homedepot, the world’s largest home improvement chain.⠀ ⠀ 🏠 The report estimates that more than three million people live within a mile of the train route, which passes through eight major cities from #Houston to #Philadelphia. In addition to the East Palestine, Ohio disaster in 2023, another accident in 2012 in Paulsboro, New Jersey involved the same route. In both cases, the trains were traveling to OxyVinyls PVC plants in New Jersey(!). ⠀ ⠀ 🏭 Manufacturing vinyl chloride and PVC results in toxic air and climate pollution. OxyVinyls and Orbia ranked as the country’s third and fifth leading sources of vinyl chloride air pollution in 2022, and EPA calculates they released more than 3.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. ⠀ ⠀ 💡 Safer alternatives to PVC are readily available, from linoleum flooring to fiber-cement siding to recycled copper piping. ⠀ ⠀ 📣 Toxic-Free Future calls for @epagov, states and The Home Depot to ban vinyl chloride and PVC plastic! ⠀ ⠀ Learn more at the link in bio!

Are your go-to retailers helping or harming the planet? 🌍 Find out in the 2024 Retailer Report Card!

This year,@dollartree and @dollargeneral received a D and D+ grade from @toxicfreefuture Retailer Report Card. Lead-tainted applesauce, cinnamon, school supplies and kids’ jewelry were found on dollar store shelves. This holiday season, we’re asking customers to visit their local dollar store to call for a new year’s resolution on product safety. 🚨Head to our 🔗in bio to learn more and take action! ... #nontoxicny #nontoxic #toxicchemicals #nontoxicdollarstores #dollarstore #discountstore #thriftstore #thrifty #tiendadedolar #tiendadolar #dollarstorefinds #holidayshopping

It's #GivingTuesday, and we’re excited to announce a $25,000 matching gift from a generous donor, so your gift will go twice as far! Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve accomplished so much this year, including our recycled black plastics report, the 2024 Retailer Report Card, federal bans on chrysotile asbestos and methylene chloride, and much more. We’re proud of our work this year, and we have BIG plans for 2025! Please make a gift today so that we can keep doing what we do best: conducting original research, advocating for the strongest state and federal policies, and pushing retailers to sell products that are truly safer. Link in bio!

Before you shop for your friends and loved ones this holiday season, find out if your favorite retailer is committed to selling safer products or if it earned a place in the 2024 Toxic Hall of Shame! Our 2024 Retailer Report Card evaluated 50 retailers on their safer chemicals policies, and found that most retailers are falling short of protecting customers from toxic chemicals and plastics in their products and packaging. And 17 retailers earned an F, including @7eleven, @chipotle, @mcdonalds, @traderjoes, and @sallybeauty. These retailers landed in our 2024 Toxic Hall of Shame, and they can and MUST do better! Toxic-Free Future’s new roadmap, the Four Essential Elements for a Safer Marketplace, can put these retailers on the path toward safer products and packaging. But they need to hear from you! Tell the CEOs of the Toxic Hall of Shame that you demand restrictions on chemicals linked to cancer, infertility, and other health problems, and to ensure the products offered to their customers are truly safer. Learn more and take action at the link in bio!

Our new peer-reviewed report on cancer-causing chemicals in black plastic household items, featured on @CNN! The report found toxic flame retardants in black #plastic household products including food containers, kitchen utensils, and toys, the result of the dirty #plastic #recycling of e-waste. Toxic flame retardants are linked to #cancer, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and reproductive and developmental toxicity. But we can solve the problem of toxic additives in recycled plastics by using safer chemicals from the very beginning. Join us in telling the U.S. government to pass a strong Global Plastics Treaty that bans hazardous chemicals in #plastics by signing our petition at the link in bio today!

🔬 Toxic-Free Future is looking for a Science Director to join our dynamic, passionate, creative team that is changing the world! As our Science Director, you will spearhead the organization’s national science program, which is the backbone of our organization and integral to our success. Learn more and apply today at the link in bio!

In September, Congress will have an opportunity to protect the health of service members, their families, and civilian workers by directing the Department of Defense to purchase Safer Choice certified cleaning products in its 2025 military spending bill. Tell your senator to require the military to purchase @epagov Safer Choice cleaning products in the 2025 NDAA. Purchasing products that use safer chemicals would protect service members and their families and help to jumpstart the market for safer products for everyone! Take action at the link in bio!

@epagov proposes designating vinyl chloride as a high-priority chemical under #TSCA! With our partners @beyondplastics and @earthjustice , we just released a report detailing the chemical's harms and recommendations for the EPA to consider during its evaluation. “Following the law and the science should lead EPA to conclude that vinyl chloride is far too dangerous to make or use, and should be banned.” Read more at the link in bio!

So great to join Orca Salmon Alliance, @defendersofwildlife, @pugetsoundkeeper, @waconservationaction, @seattleaquarium, @drcc_org and others (including Mike the Orca!) for a rally to draw @orcamonth to a close! Together, we delivered petitions to @ecologywa calling for a ban on toxic chemicals that harm #orca and their prey. To protect the health of people, fish, and wildlife, we must ban toxic chemicals put into tires and personal care products and made into #plastics.