I'm not an expert on CEPA or the speed at which Parliament moves, although I gather it moves pretty slowly, whether it's on a CEPA issue or something else. From what I've read about CEPA, I think it is working as well as any such thing can work.
Yes, science progresses and things get out of date; what may be true today may not be true tomorrow. I encounter this regularly because I do a lot of public talks and I teach a lot of courses; the issue of today, yesterday, and tomorrow comes up all the time. I'll give you one example.
I had a former student at one of my public lectures ask me a question. I was talking about antioxidants and dietary supplements. She said, “You know, I remember having you as a prof at McGill 25 years ago”, which already is a bit unnerving. She said to me, “You know, at that time you were saying that there's really no need to take any kind of vitamin pill, but now you're suggesting that maybe a one-a-day vitamin is good. You see, you scientists--one day you say this, and the next day you say that. How can we trust you?”
Well, I would suggest that 25 years is not exactly one day this, next day that, and if I were saying the same thing today that I said 25 years ago, then I'd be really worried, because it would mean science hasn't progressed.
Certainly the story on phthalates has progressed dramatically. The original phthalate problem came up with something called diethylhexyl phthalate. That turned out to have environmental estrogenic consequences and various toxicity issues. Then they started to look at different molecules, because these phthalates were found in baby toys; that was a real concern because babies put their toys into their mouths.
It then turned out that when you rearranged the molecules somewhat so that you got something we call diisononyl phthalate, this doesn't have the estrogenic effects the same way.
Diisononyl phthalate was not used commonly until three or four years ago, so when you're talking about 2000, that probably was not part of the equation. Yes, I think the regulations tend to have a lag time there, but I don't know if there's any answer to that, because science keeps progressing. Maybe tomorrow we'll find another phthalate that is better, or maybe we'll find there's some problem with the diisononyl phthalate.
I think, especially as far as the public is concerned, it's very tough to get these issues across. I had a lady who called me up; she was really worried about her shower curtain. Why? It was because she had read the label on it, and the label said PVC, polyvinyl chloride. She had read somewhere that polyvinyl chloride is plasticized with phthalates, which is true; this is what makes it soft and pliable.
We used to have records--remember records? We used to put them on this machine; it turned around, and then you put an arm on it and music would play. Anyway, those black things were made of PVC, but they were very hard. The shower curtain is very soft because we add a plasticizer to it.
She was worried because she had heard about plasticizers and the phthalates. I don't know if she thought these were going to jump out of the shower curtain and attack, but she had toxicity concerns. I tried to explain to her that this was not a big issue, but she was going to change to a nylon shower curtain, not recognizing that there's an environmental concern there as well, because nylon production actually releases nitrous oxide into the environment, and nitrous oxide is a pretty potent greenhouse gas.
It's tough to get this kind of information across, but it is always evolving. In the case of nylon, there are new green chemical processes being implemented now that will not release nitrous oxide into the environment, so if I were asked this question in six months, I might have an answer different from the one I'm giving you now. Science is an evolving discipline.