The Mass State House

Yesterday my grandmother and I went to the Massachusetts State House to go to a hearing on carbon pricing. We also went to a presentation for legislation on four  bills. These four bills were on toxins in everyday items, such as toxic flame retardants in children's products and residential furniture, these toxins are extremely bad for our healths and can cause mutation, and sometimes even cancer. Another bill was an act to disclose what toxic chemicals are in children's products, personal care products and cleaning products. The third bill was an act to require environmentally safe cleaning products, so that the things that are used to clean places do not harm the environment around them. The last act was a bill requiring disclosure of solvents used by dry cleaning. The solvents used in dry cleaning is usually perchlorate which can be harmful to both the employees and also the customers who are getting their objects cleaned.

I think the most interesting bill is the bill banning toxic fire retardants in everyday items. I think that is is ridiculous that the manufacturers of items such as children’s furniture and pajama, would put toxic flame retardants when there are non-toxic flame retardants available. nowadays, people don’t really light their pajamas on fire. They used to have a bill  in 1953, that said that children's pajamas had to have flame retardants because of several tragic accidents, most likely caused by cigarettes because people used to smoke inside much more, and often were careless about where they put the burning ends of the cigarettes. This caused many fires and tragic deaths. This caused the first bill to be made in 1996, causing pajamas to contain flame retardants. Later they were banned because of the toxic chemical health risk.


Before the hearing on carbon pricing at 1:00, we had  a quick and delicious lunch of sushi.  At 1pm, we walked into a large room that could seat 750 people, everyone was seated looking in the direction of the large table in the middle as well as the smaller one facing the larger one. The small table was for the testifiers. (there were so many testifiers, that I suspect the hearing would have gone on for hours, until about 8:00 at night) the hearing started at 1:00. There were several good points that we heard until we left at around 3:30. The point of the hearing was to put a price on the carbon emissions that people make. Currently you can get a gallon of gasoline and burn it however you like. They wanted to put a price on the carbon emissions that people make to help stop global warming.

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