San Francisco becomes first US municipality to ban sale of furniture and children’s products treated with flame retardants

October marked a major moment for healthy home legislation as the Municipality of San Francisco voted to ban the sale of furniture and children’s products “made with or containing an added flame retardant.” The first U.S. municipality to pass such a ban, San Francisco joins more than a dozen states, such as Maine and Rhode Island, that are taking concrete steps to protect their citizens from health-harming flame retardants.

As stated in the ordinance’s text, “The San Francisco Precautionary Principle Policy Statement in Chapter 1 of the Environment Code seeks to minimize harm by using the best available science to make policy choices that take into account the least environmentally harmful alternatives. A precautionary approach does not merely ask whether a chemical is safe, it also asks whether its use serves any beneficial purpose in the first place.”

There is ever-increasing scientific evidence pointing toward the health-harming effects of flame retardants such as organohalogen flame retardants, which the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission voted to ban in furniture and children’s products nationwide.

(Source: Chemical Watch)