Seventh Generation announced today a new partnership with noted advocate Erin Brockovich and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Together they’re launching the Million Baby Crawl, a grassroots effort to raise awareness about the nation’s badly outdated chemical laws and encourage parents and others everywhere to ask Congress to pass new stronger regulations that will protect the health of all Americans. br br Synthetic chemicals are currently regulated by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a decades-old law that experts say has utterly failed to keep the nation’s environment and its citizens safe from materials that cause cancer and a host of other serious illnesses. Under the outdated TCSA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to demand the information it needs to evaluate a chemical’s risk, and neither manufacturers nor the agency are required to prove a chemical’s safety before it can be used. In fact, in the 33 years since the TCSA was enacted, the EPA has required testing on only 200 of the more than 80,000 chemical compounds now in use. br br Congress is writing a new proposal to reform TSCA, updating last year’s Kid-Safe Chemicals Act. Scheduled for a Fall 2009 introduction, the policy will address these and many other deficiencies by establishing tough new safety standards for each chemical on the market and requiring manufacturers to prove that their chemicals meet these standards before they can be used in the products people buy. The bill would give the EPA new authority to restrict any substances that fail to pass the test. br br To learn how you can get involved locally to support stronger standards on toxic chemicals and make a baby of your very own that will crawl to Washington, D.C. to help fight for a healthier nation to grow up in, please visit www.MillionBabyCrawl.com. Follow the Million Baby Crawl on Twitter #mbcrawl.