Mark Schapiro, Exposing a Toxic U.S. Policy

DATE November 26, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Mark Schapiro, author of "Exposed," on the common but
dangerous chemicals found in everyday products in the US
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Many of the products that are integral parts of our lives, from computers to
cosmetics, have toxic chemicals inside. In some cases, the presence of toxics
in these products is perfectly legal in the US, but not in Europe, as a result
of recent regulation by the European Union. Are we going to end up with the
toxic products which the EU has rejected? That's one of many issues raised by
Mark Schapiro in his new book, "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday
Products, and What's At Stake For American Power." Schapiro is the editorial
director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley. A lot of
toxic chemicals are showing up in the bodies of Americans of all ages,
according to a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC. I
asked Schapiro to describe the study and its results.

Mr. MARK SCHAPIRO: Yes, well, what the CDC went out and did is they decided
to determine how many of these chemicals are ending up in the blood of
Americans. And so they tested for some 148 different chemicals, and they
realized that basically 148 chemicals were ending up in Americans' blood, and
this includes chemicals that are carcinogenic, that are mutagenic, that cause
problems with the endocrine system, that cause problems with the reproductive
system, and a whole litany of synthetic chemicals was surfacing in blood of
Americans. And the question is, where are these chemicals coming from? And
so, part of my book, I looked at the question of where some of these chemicals
are coming from, and it seems clear that they're coming from many of these
consumer products that we use on a routine basis.

GROSS: And before we get to some of these products, what are some of the
theories about what medical problems might be caused by these toxics that are
showing up in our blood?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, if you look at epidemiological surveys over the last
number of years, there's been spikes in the incidences of breast cancer,
there's been spikes in the incidences of reproductive problems among young
women, there have been declining sperm counts among men, rising incidences of
endocrine troubles, and even instances of sort of mutagenic effects in young
children as a result of chemicals being passed through the uterus. And so
there's been a kind of a litany of epidemiological data suggesting that the
chemicals that we are encountering in our daily lives are resurfacing five,
10, 15, 20 years later and contributing to these public health problems.

GROSS: Now, let's talk about a toxic that I'd never heard of before, but I've
certainly used products that it's in, and I think everybody else will be able
to say the same, and I don't even know how to pronounce this. It's
P-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S. Why don't you pronounce it for us, tell us what it is and
what it's in.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yeah, this is an incredible substance called pthalates.
Pthalates are really pretty much omnipresent in many, many different products
across the spectrum. They're often used in bottles to make bottles. It's a
plastic additive. So you use it to make plastics soft. They're used
extensively, for example, in IV tubes, believe it or not. Actual IV tubes use
pthalates to make them sort of pliable. They're used in bottles, shampoo
bottles, water bottles use pthalates. And, critically, pthalates are used in
children's toys to make toys nice and soft and pliable. All those kind of
rubber duckies that you might remember as a kid or people with children are
still playing around with, the little toy giraffes and toy trolls, things that
are soft and pliable often have pthalates in them.

GROSS: Can we add dashboards to the list?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: We can dashboards. And what's funny is that pthalates kind of
slowly degrade, and the dashboard in your car, you might notice that after a
couple of years, it gets a little more brittle, it's not quite so soft and
pliable as it was when you bought it. And that's because the pthalates in the
dashboard basically enter into the air and come out of the plastic into the
air, and the plastic becomes harder as a result. So basically you're
breathing them in as time goes on over long periods of time.

GROSS: You know, that's interesting because I always think of plastics as,
like, inert substances, like they are what they are and nothing's going to
come off of them. But apparently these pthalates, in certain plastics we end
up breathing in particles of it?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we breathe them in all the time.
They're in shower curtains, in plastic shower curtains and stuff. Pthalates
are kind of all around us, and if we think that plastic is an inert substance,
you know, we really are misunderstanding what plastics are, which is a
combination of different chemical elements to create this phenomenal stuff
that has kind of transformed what we experience in the marketplace over the
last 40 years, and the era of plastic that we're living in now. And a lot of
that is made possible through pthalates.

But there's a problem, and the problem is that the scientists have been
studying extensively--pthalates are hugely studied. I mean, I went
through--for the book, I went through dozens of different studies, and there
are piles and piles of studies on pthalates. And what they're actually
finding out is that pthalates can have a very strong effect on the endocrine
system. So young children who are exposed to pthalates very early between the
ages of like one and three years old, pthalates can have a very potent effect
on the development of testosterone, which, I don't have to tell you is not
really something we want to play around with at a young age.

And what they found is that, one, pthalates are passed through the mother,
through the mother's womb into a child and children are born with existing
exposure to pthalates. And then in the process of sucking on all those neat
little toys, playing with them, breathing them as they degrade, they're
finding children in America with this kind of rising rate of pthalates in
their blood.

GROSS: Now, a lot of your book is about how the United States compared to the
European Union is regulating toxic substances in everyday products. So has
the US done anything about pthalates in terms of regulation?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, the answer to that is no. And what's extraordinary when
I began looking at this is I realized there's enormous amount of research
being done by American scientists. The Environmental Protection Agency
supports a lot of very top-flight scientific research into pthalates and many
other chemicals that I talk about in the book. And what's been interesting to
see is that these scientists come out with this incredible research, and
there's been nobody in the federal government willing to act on their
findings.

But these scientists increasingly are finding a very willing, receptive
audience. Not in Washington, but in Brussels; and Brussels, of course, is the
capital of the European Union. And in the European Union, these American
scientists, many of which are supported by the EPA, end up submitting their
evidence, they've done testimony in the European parliament, and the European
Union has taken very, very strong action when it comes to pthalates. So you
have a situation where the EU, starting back in 1999, basically passed a law
that said that because of the dangers to children from exposure to pthalates,
they banned pthalates in children's toys. European industry has found a very
effective substitute, meaning a far less toxic substitute to be used in
children's toys.

And I assure you, if you've been to Europe and children have plenty of good
times with their fun little pliable toys. It's not like they've been thrown
back into the Stone Age for toys. There's plenty of fun items in every
European children's play group. So the Europeans have taken a very strong
stand on this as a way of protecting their children from the exposure to
pthalates, whereas here in the United States there's been no action at the
federal level.

I would add that about a month ago in the state of California, the state of
California finally, after analyzing the same data that the Europeans have
analyzed over these many, many years, have decided to ban pthalates. The
governor of California, Schwarzenegger, signed a law that would ban pthalates
from children's toys starting in January of 2009.

GROSS: Now, as you point out in your book, China manufactures about 85
percent of the world's toys. Are they manufacturing toys with pthalates?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yes. I mean, this is one of the incredible things that I
found in researching this book, is that China, of course, this huge producer
of goods across the spectrum in the consumer marketplace, China produces, as
you said, you know, 85 percent of the world's toys. So what do they do?
Well, for the European markets, they produce toys without pthalates, and then
you look at the United States, and they are producing toys with pthalates to
the United States. So sometimes in the very same industrial region--because
often in China single industries are concentrated in particular regions of the
country--you have in a single industrial region toys being produced with
pthalates for the United States and without pthalates for Europeans.

GROSS: Is it cheaper to produce the toys with pthalates? Because it's not
like Americans are demanding more pthalates in their children's toys. I
mean...

Mr. SCHAPIRO: No, no, not that I've noticed. No. It's just that the
government hasn't demanded it. The government hasn't demanded--toys are not
significantly higher whatsoever in Europe. In fact, some of the major
multinational companies, for example, BASF and other big multinational
companies in Europe, that used to produce pthalates are now producing a
pthalate substitute that works very well. And toys have stayed the same. And
the toy industry in Europe--and this is what I looked at--was interesting to
see did this have an economic impact on the toy industry? And no, it didn't.
The toy industry is doing very fine in Europe. It's actually grown steadily,
and the economic impact--I actually went--in researching this book, I went and
tried to find an analyst here in the United States or in Europe who would tell
me what the effect was of the pthalate ban in Europe on the toy industry. You
know, I spent a lot of time trying to find out what is the economic impact of
these kind of changes. And I couldn't find one analyst anywhere, either in
Europe or the United States, who said that it even had a negligible impact on
the financial status of the toy industry.

GROSS: Is there any way of finding out whether products you have have
pthalates in them?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well...

GROSS: I mean, do you have ingredients that say pthalates on them?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, usually not. I mean, there's really no law that
requires that ingredients be listed. I think you can assume that if it does
not say pthalate-free, there's a very good chance that pthalates are in the
toys that you are using today.

And I would just point out because it's kind of fascinating. I like following
trails and I like following information, and I've kind of approached this
whole topic from a very hard edged look at like what is the economic impact,
how do these products flow to the global economy. We know that China and
other emerging economies are important producers in the whole global picture,
and so I wanted to see how these laws that came out of either Europe or
America sort of rippled their way through the global economy.

And what was interesting is to see that, one, we talked about how China, it
clearly is producing a huge amount of toys for the American market, and every
month I've been following, there's an incredible database that the European
customs officials have developed. And that database basically lists every
product that is confiscated off the market in Europe because it violates one
or another of these chemical safety restrictions. Every month, and I've been
following this for like two years now. Every month, there's been some
confiscations of little toys off of the shelves in European stores because of
their violation of the pthalate ban. And it's incredible. You look at the
data, and it says something like, you know, for example, in last July, the
authorities in Lithuania confiscated a whole shipment of little toy giraffes
and toy hippopotamus made out of plastic because they violated the pthalate
ban. And the question is, where do those toys end up once they're confiscated
in the European Union.

GROSS: I see where you're heading.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: OK.

GROSS: They come here, is that what you're going to say?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yes. I mean, this is the market.

GROSS: You're saying we get...

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Can't sell it in Europe...

GROSS: ...the stuff that's too dangerous for Europe.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Exactly. Stuff that's too dangerous for Europe ends up being
sent to the United States.

GROSS: My guest is Mark Schapiro. His new book is called "Exposed." We'll
talk more about toxic chemicals in everyday products after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Mark Schapiro. He's the author
of the book "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, and What's At
Stake for American Power." He's also the editorial director of the Center for
Investigative Reporting in Berkeley.

You're telling us that because of the different regulatory environments in the
United States vs. the European Union, there's a lot of chemicals that are
considered unsafe in the European Union and when products containing those
chemicals are confiscated, some of them get sold in the United States because
they're not regulated against here. Give us another example of something you
think is getting dumped, so to speak, in the United States because you can't
sell it in Europe.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Cosmetics. We can start with cosmetics. Many people, of
course, use cosmetics, many women use cosmetics. Some men use cosmetics.
It's a pretty popular item. And most Americans, I think, are really not
really aware of what are in cosmetics. I mean, people think it's some kind of
natural flowers and things like that, but in fact, it's a lot of synthetic
chemicals. So what happened in March of 2005 was the European Union passed a
law which basically prohibited the use of three types of chemicals in
cosmetics, and that is, one, carcinogenic chemicals; two, chemicals that cause
mutations, genetic mutations; and three, that cause damage to the reproductive
system. So starting in March, 2005, you had this incredible law that came out
in the European Union. I say "incredible" because the affect that it had on
the American cosmetic industry was dramatic, because never before has the
American cosmetic industry been forced even to reveal the nature of the
ingredients in the cosmetics that are sold to Americans.

And so what happened was that several major American multinationals began
looking at the ingredients in their cosmetics. And they began analyzing what
are in their cosmetics. And they began removing the chemicals that cause
reproductive harm, that cause cancer and that cause mutations. And one after
another--you know, during my reporting, I spent quite a bit of time in
Brussels, and I went to the headquarters of a major American cosmetics
manufacturer, and I talked to those people about what they were doing about
this new law. And the interesting thing is, they said, `Well, of course,
we're going through our ingredients, and we're going to take the ones out that
cause cancer or mutations or reproductive damage.' And they were just going
through a systematic effort. They hired a couple of new toxicologists, they
hired a couple of new lawyers and they went through it.

And then--this was in 2005--about three or four months later, I came back to
California where I live, and there was a debate raging in the California state
capital in Sacramento, and it was about a bill that would require cosmetic
companies to reveal to the state health authorities the chemicals that were
cancer causing, mutagenic or reproductive toxins. And who was the strongest
lobbyist against that measure in the legislature was representatives of the
very same company who I just interviewed in Brussels and who told me they were
taking those chemicals out.

GROSS: So does this mean that Europeans are getting safer cosmetics than
Americans are?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yes. That is what it means. That is what it means.

GROSS: Does the European Union have like a different philosophy about
regulation than, say, the Environmental Protection Agency does or the Food and
Drug Administration?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yes. The European Union takes what they call a precautionary
principle, which is, basically, they look at the accumulation of evidence, and
when the accumulation of evidence suggests harm, they believe in acting before
harm is actually done. In the United States, we have a much higher threshold
for action by the regulatory authorities. So basically you have to have a
complete scientifically unquestioned accumulation of evidence, and even at
that point--which many scientists say is extremely difficult to obtain--I
mean, we saw some of this dynamic unfolding around the global warming
questions about the accumulation of scientific data which the Europeans were
ready to move much quicker on than does the United States.

So here in the United States, the regulatory agencies are, one, held to a very
high standard of scientific proof of harm, which is a very difficult standard
to meet. Number two, are forced to go through a cost/benefit analysis where
the cost to industry are weighed against the benefits to society. And I think
these two factors have made American regulatory authorities far slower to act
against harm than those in Europe.

GROSS: Let's get back to cosmetics. I think a lot of lipstick wearers were
very alarmed recently to learn that there was a test conducted by the Campaign
for Safe Cosmetics, and they released a study saying that more than half of 33
brand name lipsticks that they tested contained detectable levels of lead.
And one-third of the tested lipsticks exceeded the FDA's limit for lead in
candy, to which I can only say, what? There's lead in candy? I mean, forget
even lipsticks for a minute. What is lead doing in candy? And what is it
doing in lipstick?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, I thought it tasted really good, actually.

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah. Mm.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: It's delicious to suck on. It's really good. I'm not sure
why it actually ends up in candy, to be totally honest. I think it may have
had some adhesive qualities that hold the sugar or the composition together.
And I think with lipstick it aids in the application somehow. And I think
that this phenomenon--it's been startling, and I think it tells the story of
how inadequate the American regulatory authorities have been in watching over
this process. And now suddenly we're finding out--and not because the
regulatory authorities have found the lead. Let's make that clear. It wasn't
the US government. It was actually a group of NGOs, a group of environmental
health nongovernmental organizations, that actually did their own tests and
found lead in the candy in lipsticks and then reported it to the press, then
word finally got to the US government. So I think it tells you a lot about
the inadequate efforts of the US government to even monitor these substances.

GROSS: And as you say, if you want to find out if your lipstick has lead in
it, don't bother looking at the ingredients because it's not going to be
listed even if it's in there, right?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: No, certainly not.

GROSS: So what does the FDA have to say about regulating cosmetics? Like,
what does the FDA see as its role in regulating cosmetics and toiletries?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: The FDA has a very limited role when it comes to regulating
cosmetics. It was back in the '30s, the FDA was created, and at that time,
the mason--you know, cosmetic industry succeeded in exempting themselves from
regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, so the Food and Drug
Administration does not have authority to regulate the ingredients in
cosmetics. I mean, I think most Americans presume that somebody somewhere has
signed off on the safety of cosmetics, and in fact that's not the case. Other
than hair dyes, where the FDA does have some limited authority to oversee the
kind of ingredients that are used in hair dye. But otherwise, you know, all
the mascaras and the creams and all the fun substances that you put on your
eyes and your face and your skin, there's nobody out there that's basically
saying that they're safe, and that's because the FDA doesn't have the power.

GROSS: Mark Schapiro is the author of "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of
Everyday Products, and What's At Stake for American Power." He's the editorial
director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley. He'll be back
in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Mark Schapiro, author of
the book "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at
Stake for American Power." In addition to discussing toxics in everything from
computers to cosmetics, the book explains that the European Union has adopted
much stricter controls on these toxics. Schapiro says that's likely to have
an impact on the health of Americans and our economy.

Let's look at another series of products that has toxics within them. And
again this is something that I've just never really thought about a lot. I
guess I should have known better, but a lot of electronic products, including
computers and cell phones, have toxics in them. Let's make a list of some of
these products that we should be thinking about when it comes to either using
them or disposing of them.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: The chemicals that are in electronics--because electronics are
very sophisticated items, and I came up with immense respect for the engineers
who devised all these innovative products, you know, the iPods and DVD players
and the video players--but to make these things work you need small amounts of
very toxic either chemicals or minerals to make the electrical connection
work. And that includes things like cadmium and chromium and lead and
mercury, as well as flame retardants that are used on our computers and our
printers and everything called PBDEs.

And these substances, over time, once you throw them away in a dump and they
slowly begin to degrade, and all those connections unravel, and the covers
begin to disintegrate and rust, and these small amounts of chemicals in these
electronic devices begin to leech into the water supply and into the soil and
into the air. And so the European Union began analyzing what cost this would
have down the line 10, 20 years down the line as all these chemicals began
accumulating. And so what's happened is we've learned an enormous about the
chemical composition of these electronics. And I would stress that basically
it's not like you're going to get sick from holding onto an electronic device
in one form or another because in their current state, the state you buy them
in, it's all pretty well contained. But we're talking about the long-term
disposal of these kind of products. And that's where the public health issues
begin to raise their head.

And Europeans, looking at this kind of long-term effect of the disposal
problem of these substances, decided to ban these six substances--which, as I
mentioned, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and two types of fire retardant
that are considered to be carcinogenic.

You know, it's incredible, Terry, in the process of reporting this book--I sat
in these meetings. I live not far from Silicon Valley. I live in San
Francisco, and I'd go down to these meetings where people from the high tech
industries would gather for these seminars. And they were these kind of
panicked seminars because these consultants would come in who were American
engineers who had come to understand what it was the Europeans were doing.
And they were delivering the news to their engineer colleagues about, `Hold on
you guys, you know, in several months you guys are not going to be able to
work anymore with lead and mercury and cadmium and chromium.' And there was
such unease and disorientation in the room because, for the first time, you
had this power because nobody wants to lose the European market. This is a
$500-billion-a-year market for the electronics industry.

And so this move coming out of the European Union forced the engineers who are
responsible for some of those great American high tech inventions to really
re-think the means by which they constructed those inventions.

GROSS: So have engineers come up with alternatives to those toxic substances?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yes. The prompting by the European Union to remove these
substances has forced the engineers to come up with alternatives. And the
funny thing is, they have.

GROSS: Well, who's got the bigger market, the United States or the European
Union?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, that's the key thing to understanding this whole dynamic
is because it's the European Union. The European Union now is a much larger
single market that the United States. And that's been at the core of this
enormous political and economic shift.

GROSS: So if the European lobby wants something banned then manufacturers
around the world better pay heed because they're such a huge market, even
bigger than us.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it used to be that the United
States was the world's biggest market by far. And so when we passed a law,
for example, we passed our environmental protection laws back in the '70s and
'80s, the rest of the world pretty much followed what we were doing because
they wanted to retain access to the American market. And now that's flipped.
And it flipped...(unintelligible)...in 2005 when the European Union at that
time expanded to 25 different countries spreading, you know, from Portugal in
the West all the way to Lithuania and Latvia in the East and Cyprus in the
South and Finland up to the north. And so that's almost 500 million people,
which is significantly larger than our own market of about 350, 370 million
Americans. And that shift, which I think many Americans have not been aware
of, is having enormous impact on essentially who's writing the rules of the
global economy.

GROSS: You know, in the United States the business lobbies are very powerful
and often stand in the way of regulation because they feel like it's going to
make producing their products too expensive and the regulations will be
cumbersome. Doesn't Europe have business lobbies? I mean, how come the
business lobby is so often successful in the United States when it comes to
regulations, but in the European Union these regulations are going through?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, that is a really good question. And it's a question I
asked myself repeatedly as I went through this reporting in the book because
the fact is that the Europeans are hardly some idyllic place where everything
is resolved and everyone is in love with nature and they're all trying to find
some harmony with the universe. There's very powerful European industry
lobby. It's extremely strong, extremely intrusive in the legislative process.

But there are some very key differences between the United States and Europe
in terms of the relation of government and industry. And one of the
differences is the role of campaign contributions which you cannot do in
Europe and you can, of course, in the United States, which gives industry a
lot more power in the US.

And two, even more significant, I think, is this critical thing. In Europe
the government pays for health care. And when I realized this I suddenly
understood and I began to look at things very differently. It's basically,
the European government is paying for health care. And so they are basically
looking down the line. They're looking five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line
at the illnesses that are caused by chemical exposure. And who pays for the
cost of those illnesses? Well, the government does. And so the government is
looking at tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars as we here in the
United States are. We're looking at the same kind of health effects from
chemicals. In the United States it's we individuals take that cost. And in
the European Union, it's the government that pays that cost. So that gives a
very powerful incentive for European governments to act on these chemical
contributors to health problems.

GROSS: My guest is Mark Schapiro. His new book is called "Exposed." We'll
talk more about toxic chemicals in everyday products after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Mark Schapiro. He's the author
of the book "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, and What's at
Stake for American Power." He's also the editorial director of the Center for
Investigative Reporting in Berkeley.

Let me move on to genetically modified organisms, GMOs as they're called, and
that would include corn.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And in the United States, there's a lot of genetically modified corn
being grown. But the European Union has outlawed genetically modified
organisms, right?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, it's a little more complicated than that because what
the Europeans have done is they have not banned the sale of genetically
modified food in Europe. What they've done is imposed strict scientific
requirements. And each new variety of genetically modified corn, whether it's
corn or wheat or other types of commodities, has to be analyzed by a
scientific body that actually assesses number one, what it's nutritional
impact is and number two, what it's long term effects are on environmental
balance of agriculture, basically. And if it passes a very strenuous series
of assessments, then it can get onto the European market and it can be sold in
Europe.

But what's happened, number one, is there's a very limited number of varieties
that have been accepted for sale in Europe. And, two the European consumers
have, time after time after time, expressed no desire for genetically modified
ingredients in their food. So basically what's happened is that there's no
market for genetically engineered food. Whereas here in the United States
which we kind of jumped in to this technology without really assessing what
its potential risks were, there are basically no controls over genetically
engineered food. We treat it like any other crop, basically.

GROSS: And we consumers don't know whether the corn in our products is
genetically modified or not.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Right. Right. You have no idea because there's no labeling
requirement here. And there is a labeling requirement in Europe. And the
food processors know that if they have a genetically modified food ingredient
label on a can or a box of goods it's not going to sell. So, as a result,
there's no market.

GROSS: I can see a lot of manufacturers thinking that the European Union
model is such a bureaucratic maze that it would be hard to operate within it.
And I'm wondering, from your research into the EU model of regulation, how
much of a bureaucratic maze is it? You know, all this regulation must be kind
of difficult to navigate.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: I think there are multiple elements to that. One, I think,
many Americans like to think that the EU is this kind of confusing bundle of
different countries and all these languages and these funny regulations over
the size of the size of salami has to be uniform and the crazy multiple
languages they're operating in. But, in fact, what they've missed during this
whole evolution of the EU is the emergence of a very powerful governing force.
And that government force works very much like our own governing force. When
they come out with a regulation, the news is sent out from Brussels to all the
member states of the European Union. And those member states are obligated to
establish those new rules.

So here in the United States, I think what you're onto, Terry, is this idea
that basically the argument against regulation in the United States is that it
impinges on innovation, and that we here in the United States take great pride
in the innovation of our business and the ability, the relative freedom that
we have to come up with new ideas and new approaches. Well, to some extent
that's true. But when you're talking about questions of environmental damage
and such like that, the other part of that equation is the incredible
innovation that could be prompted by establishing a governmental rule as to
what is and is not acceptable.

So essentially what the Europeans have done is establish a new floor by which
they're industry operates. They say these particular chemicals are too
dangerous to be accepted in consumer products across the board, start from
there and then move up and compete. And so there's enormous competition now
in the European Union over coming up with new approaches, new products, less
toxic ingredients. Competition has not been stopped, it's just been moved to
a higher level.

GROSS: Summarize for us, if you would, how you think the United States is
gaining and/or losing from the European Union's regulations of toxics?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Here's what I think is really a powerful thing that I learned
even in the process of doing this reporting is that the United States in its
intransigence when it comes to environmental protection is actually losing
ground globally. So when I talk about these various initiatives that are
coming out of Europe now and environmental protection, those initiatives are
not limited to Europe. They're actually traveling across the world. So, for
example, the emerging economies--India, Brazil, Taiwan, places like that--they
have begun sending delegations regularly to Brussels to learn how they
regulate cosmetics because there's a growing movement in their countries to
protect citizens from hazards in cosmetics. So the same thing in industrial
chemicals and in chemicals in electronics. And electronics, the Chinese who
manufacture a lot of electrical goods are beginning to establish rules very
close to those of the European Union. The Chinese have banned the same list
of substances in electronics used by their own people that the Europeans have.
And you know what they've done is they've, of course, exempted exports. So
we'll be the ones receiving the electronics with chemicals that are banned in
the European Union and starting early next year in China.

So what's on the negative side of what you're talking about in terms of what
the US is losing, we're losing an enormous amount of global influence. Number
two, when American multinational companies begin to adapt their production
lines to those requirements of the European Union like I talked about with the
electronics industry and even with some of the cosmetic companies and other
companies, when they begin adapting to the Europeans' laws, what does that
mean here in the United States? It means that our own regulatory
authorities--the FDA and the EPA and others--have become irrelevant to the
decisions of major American industries. And third is the effect on our
competitive position. So what are people going to think over time when, as
you have emerging middle class in emerging economies all around the world, and
globalization begins to take even more whole that it has today. Well, when
people are given a choice between products that have gone through a toxic
screen in the European Union and have not gone through a toxic screen in the
United States, which ones are they going to choose? So I think there's
enormous economic implication for these changes as well.

GROSS: How has your investigation into toxics in everyday products affected
the products that you use?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: That's a very good question. I suppose I'm more understanding
of the way that my body interacts and metabolism interacts with the chemicals.
I'm not a kind of a natural kind of organic obsessive person, so I'm not, to
be honest, totally neurotic about these questions. What really gets me is I
like to have input, the information. What really gets me most is not having
the information, and knowing that the industry and the government have gone to
extraordinary lengths to prevent me and you and everybody else from having the
information about these kind of substances so you can make a choice. I think
at the very minimum that is something that people can demand here.

How has it changed the way I do things? Well, let's face it. I've always
been kind of skeptical of what I don't know. When I don't know something, I
assume there might be something dicey happening. So I assume that...

GROSS: You're killing yourself.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. I kind of assume...

GROSS: You're killing yourself with some of the products you use.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you know, I can
be, really to be totally honest, I mean, I smoke. I mean, I enjoy smoking
and, you know, I like having a cigarette once in a while. And sometimes more
than every once in a while because I like to have a cigarette. But I know
exactly what I'm doing. I light up a cigarette, I know what I'm doing. I
know the risks. I know what it is. I'm, of course, totally aware of what's
involved with the cigarette. So I think the thing that gets me about this
whole issue is really what you don't know. You get the information out there
and then people can make a decision as to the risks that you want to take.
And right now that information is not there.

GROSS: At the beginning of our conversation you mentioned these pthalates,
this toxic substance that's in a lot of soft plastics including a lot of
children's toys and baby toys. So like for parents who want to make sure that
they're not buying toys that have pthalates in them, is there any way of
knowing?

Mr. SCHAPIRO: There are some toys that are coming out that say pthalate
free. And one can only presume that those manufacturers are telling the
truth. And because there's no government out there affirming that that's the
case, it's highly unclear that that's exactly the case. But let's presume
that they're telling the truth. And the other way they can do it, they can
fly to the state of California starting in January of 2009 and buy their toys
in the state of California or they could of course fly to Brussels or to
anywhere in Europe right now and buy their toys there.

GROSS: Gee, thanks for the suggestions. Sounds really efficient. Very, very
effective.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: An excuse to go to Europe.

GROSS: Yes. OK. Well, thanks for all the bad news.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Well, no, listen, listen. I want to make it clear that I
don't see the book as a bad news book. What I think is actually really
interesting is that in the US--I've been following like environmental topics
for years, you know, for like two decades I've been writing environmental
topics. And I've found these arguments over and over and over again, you
know, environmentalists say `take this stuff out, it's really dangerous.' And
the industry is coming back and saying, `no, get real. You know, we've got to
make trade-offs in modern society. You're going to end up with throwing a lot
of people out of work and it's going to get more expensive. And it'll be an
economic catastrophe for our country, and plus this stuff isn't dangerous
anyway.' And I got--to be honest, I got kind of tired of that dynamic. It's
just kind of like kabuki theater after a while, you know, the same kind of
argument back and forth. It's all kabuki.

So then I started following what was happening in Europe and I said, hey, wait
a minute. Hold on here for a second. The world's major economy is actually
requiring that things be done differently. And so what's the reaction here in
the United States? And so I started looking at what was the effect be in
Europe when this started happening. And the effect is, down the line, all
these industries we've been talking about and more, the economic catastrophe
that was predicted never happened. It never happened. So this has been a
bluff over and over and over here in the United States, a bluff as to what is
and isn't possible. So I see it as the opposite of a kind of bummer. I
actually see it as kind of a new way of looking at things, and a new way of
suggesting what's possible.

GROSS: Well, in that case, thanks for the good news.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: OK. Good. Glad to hear it that way.

GROSS: Mark Schapiro, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. SCHAPIRO: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

GROSS: Mark Schapiro is the author of "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of
Everyday Products, and What's at Stake for American Power." He's the editorial
director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley.

By the way, tomorrow we'll talk about re-thinking how we use and conserve
water.

Coming up our book critic, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novella set at a Red
Lobster restaurant. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Stewart O'Nan's
new book, "Last Night at the Lobster"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Although Stewart O'Nan has nearly 20 works of fiction and nonfiction to his
credit. His name isn't that well known beyond the community of loyal readers
and independent bookstore prowlers. But book critic Maureen Corrigan predicts
that O'Nan's literary celebrity will grow in the wake of his latest book,
"Last Night at the Lobster," a little book that's making a big splash. Here's
her review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN reporting:

"Novella" is one of those lightly pretentious literary terms that just oozes
class, poetic language and eternal themes. Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice"
set the gold standard for this category, packing a story about illicit love,
and yes, death, festooned with illusions to classical Greek mythology into a
scant 100 or so pages. You wouldn't ordinarily think of the term novella in
connection with deep fat fryers and frozen tilapia, but fortunately for us
readers, Stewart O'Nan did. His newly published novella called "Last Night at
the Lobster" is a shimmering story about the centrality of work, even drudge
work, in people's lives. It's also about the unruly alternative families that
the workplace creates.

As in Mann's classic, the big themes of love and loss pervade O'Nan's novella,
although here they come garnished not with mythological allusions but with
tartar sauce. That's because O'Nan's story is set in a Red Lobster restaurant
on the day before it's scheduled to shut down on orders from corporate
headquarters. The main character of O'Nan's tale is Manny DeLeon, the
35-year-old manager of this doomed Red Lobster that sits in the corner of a
rundown Connecticut shopping mall. Manny is a decent guy, though he screwed
up by having an affair with one of his current employees, a sexy waitress
named Jacquie. Manny's girlfriend Deena is now pregnant and he and Jacquie
are history, though he still yearns for Jacquie. And this being closing day,
he'll never see her again after tonight.

When Manny arrives to open the Lobster for the final time, four shopping days
before Christmas, a snowstorm is gathering force and he's now down from 44
employees to a skeleton staff of about 10. That's if everybody shows up.
After Christmas, four of those workers, survivors whom Manny selected, will go
with him over to the Olive Garden in another nearby mall. Manny fortifies
himself against the stress of the coming hours by smoking a joint in his
parked Buick. And O'Nan, who writes in the tension-building present tense,
neatly describes Manny as he bends to a flame then nods back, astronaut-like,
against the headrest and exhales.

An hour or so later after he's checked the temperature of the walk-in
refrigerator, spray cleaned the gummy, shellacked tables and dumped a bucket
of old cooking oil from the Fry-O-Lator, Manny will realize that he's no
longer stoned, that that private part of the day is over. One more last
thing. That's one aspect of work among many that O'Nan really nails here, the
mutinous impulse to carve out small spaces of private time during the shift.
Some of the workers arrive, the day kicks into gear and, despite the snow
falling more heavily now, the usual assortment of regulars and mall rats shows
up. Among them a noisy office retirement party, an oblivious young mother
with her demon child of a son and a pair of elderly women, `cotton heads' as
they're dismissively called, who wave around an expired meal coupon and drive
the waitress nuts. Here's how O'Nan describes that situation.

"The grandmothers insist the coupon's barely expired. The waitress hands it
to Manny as if it's dipped in anthrax. The expiration date is last Saturday,
close enough, except as he's standing there, he notices the ceramic holder
that should be full of sugar and Equal and Splenda and Sweet'N Low packets has
been picked clean, always a danger with these cotton heads, their memories of
the depression pushing them beyond thrift into greed. It shouldn't matter to
him, since anything not in a sealed box will probably get tossed, but now he
feels doubly fooled."

The cotton heads don't get their freebie and so leave a penny tip. The creepy
kid pukes up butterscotch ice cream sundae all over the main dining room rug,
and on it goes into the snowy night. Manny, like the captain of a foundering
tanker, struggles mightily to steer his restaurant into port for the final
time, all the while dreading the moment when he has to say goodbye both to
Jacquie and to a job that's defined him for years.

In restrained, beautifully detailed and often hilarious fashion, "Last Night
at the Lobster" evokes this sense of loss, both mundane and transcendent.
When Manny locks the door on the Lobster, that clean, well-lighted place at
the corner of a dark and snowy mall parking lot, you feel like something more
than the shrimp scampi special has been sold out.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed "Last Night at the Lobster" by Stewart O'Nan.
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