In the United States, in the 1960s, smoking a cigarette behind the wheel was common. Seat belts were barely used and airbags had not yet been installed. These driving behaviors and safety violations have contributed to the high rates of roadway fatality that have occurred in those years.
To decrease vehicle crashes and fatalities, Congress created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1970. A year later, the new company brought regulations aimed at lessening the threat to cars from indoor fires, especially those caused through cigarettes and parties. This regulation, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 302, requires that the internal vehicle parts, the passenger compartment, not burn when exposed to a small open flame.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this smokestack protection regulation has prevented fatality-related deaths. However, more than 50 years later, in an era when car lighting is surpassed, what is popular remains unchanged. Even worse, to respect popularity, car brands use autocinogen flasks that can harm the health of everyone who drives a car. These chemicals are added to foam in vehicle seats, plastics on dashboards, etc. , without being proven to warn of fires or deaths from fires.
In an examination through Duke University and the Green Science Policy Institute, scientists found that the striking carcinogen chemicals are internal to every car they’ve studied, or 101 recent cars from 22 different brands. Amazingly, all of the cars contained one or more call-back bureaucracy, the same carcinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals whose use was stopped in bathroom pajamas in the 1970s and in furniture and youth for young people there for more than ten years.
For the technically-minded, tris (1-chloro-isopropyl) phosphate (TCIPP), a flame retardant under investigation by the U.S. National Toxicology Program as a carcinogen was found in 99 percent of the cars studied. Almost all other cars had other flame retardants present, including tris (1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCIPP) and tris (2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP), both of which the state of California has identified as carcinogens under their Proposition 65.
In addition to cancer, firefire chemicals are connected to neurological and reproductive damage. Epidemiological studies have shown that in the United States, the average child has lost 3 to five IQ problems after exposure to a fire start, furniture, and youth that were previously used for youth to meet useless flammability standards. It is estimated that this loss of IQ has billions of dollars in lost productivity to our entire population. Even worse, a recent examination said that other people with the same flame retardant grades in their blood were about 4 times more likely to die from cancer than other people with the lowest grades.
Particularly vulnerable are children, whose brains are still developing and who breathe more air pound for pound than adults. Automotive workers, rideshare and taxi drivers, and others who spend considerable time in or around cars would also have higher exposures and potentially greater health harm.
Unlike the dangers of the physical state, the protection of the chimney obtains advantages of the popular is not compatible with science or data. In sponsored studies through NHTSSA, General Motors and the Motorized Vehicle Fire Research Institute, chimneys after simulated accidents, the maximum non -unusual cause of fatal were discovered that vehicle chimneys would progress in a very temporarily time they entered the passenger compartment. This suggests that the flame retarders in the interiors of the vehicle do not give a contribution to survival in vehicle chimneys after collision. We also know that the presence of flame retardants can make smoked and more toxic fireplace, potentially prevented, and accumulating dangers for the occupants of the vehicle, chimneys and other lifeguards.
The good news is that this is a problem NHTSA can and should address by updating its 53-year-old standard. Last week, Consumer Reports, the International Association of Fire Fighters, and the Green Science Policy Institute formally filed a Petition for Rulemaking calling on the automotive safety agency to “Get cancer-causing chemicals out of cars.”
More than a decade ago, California replaced a similar flammability from the popular 1970s for furniture that had led brands to load flame retardants onto sofas, chairs and baby products across the country. When it became transparent that this popular flammability of obsolete furniture did not provide any genuine fireplace protection gained advantages, but resulted in serious damage to physical condition, it was updated in 2013 to a popular fashionable that is met without flame delays.
In particular, this update has maintained, or even increased, the protection of the furniture chimney through the prevention of cutting chimneys before succeeding in the internal flammable foam of the furniture. Better yet, youth and youth products purchased in the decade beyond no longer bring poisonous flame delays into our home. Recent studies have shown that thanks to the update of popular flammability for furniture, the retardation degrees of the carcinogenic flame are now decreasing in American homes.
The outdated federal automobile flammability standard has been exposing drivers, passengers, first responders, and automotive workers to cancer-causing chemicals for half a century without providing a fire safety benefit. NHTSA, the responsible agency, should begin research to find a better test and update this harmful and ineffective vehicle standard as soon as possible—so our cars can be both fire-safe and healthy.
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