Mariah Blake

And plastics, which had been used for all kinds of uses during the war,

were used suddenly for every imaginable purpose.

You know, they became shower curtains and hula hoops and washing machines and car parts.

You know, almost everything we come into contact with is synthetic.

Back then, was there a system in place to help regulate those chemicals?

The main principle underlying the way we regulate chemicals and all kinds of materials in this country were first articulated in the 1920s.

So when they very first began producing leaded gasoline in the 1920s, and this is kind of wild, but the plants where they were producing them

had massive problems with lead poisoning.

So at least 12 died, dozens were hospitalized, and this made national headlines.

And public health officials and scientists began calling for this substance to be studied before it was produced and circulated.

Industry argued that this wasn't necessary, that the threat was only really to people working in these plants.

And they found an advocate in this scientist named Robert Kehoe.

And Kehoe argued that there was really no point in keeping useful products off the market based on possible future harm.

In the end, Kehoe prevailed.

But more importantly, this principle that products should be presumed safe until proven otherwise has become the underpinning principle of our entire system for regulating potentially toxic substances.

So essentially, the FDA doesn't really have the authority to regulate chemicals in cosmetics and has limited authority to regulate chemicals in food.

In fact, the vast majority, and this is a fact that shocked me when I first learned it, but the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals in circulation in the United States today have never undergone any form of safety testing.

Oh, wow.

At least not that the public and regulators know about.

So we are all essentially guinea pigs in this vast, uncontrolled chemistry experiment.