It’s hard to say.

We all assume that chemicals used to make ordinary products are tested for safety — but they are not. From baby bottles made with bisphenol A (BPA) to carpets containing formaldehyde, dangerous chemicals are in our homes, places of work, and the products we use every day. With each new scientific report linking toxic chemical exposure to a serious health problem, it becomes more obvious that the law intended to keep harmful chemicals in check — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 — is not working.

Why? Well, as you can imagine the chemical industry doesn’t want you to know if their products are toxic, because then, you know, you might not buy them! Remember how the tobacco industry tried for decades to discredit the science around smoking? They also don’t want to be told not to sell a product because it can make people sick. A recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune on brominated flame retardants reveals how the chemical industry is deceiving the public, even under oath!

But our families cannot afford to keep living in this toxic economy, and we should not have to choose between the things we need to live a good life and our health.

What’s needed is a real law that protects the 99.99% of us who are exposed to toxic chemicals every day for the profit of the 1% that run the chemical industry. We need to fix the broken TSCA and move forward to a green and healthy marketplace that provides what we need without exposing us to the risk of cancer, birth defects, diabetes, or any of the other illnesses linked to toxic economy.

Folks from all over the country are headed to Congress next week to tell Congress to fix this law and protect our environment and our families. Please take a minute to give them your support by signing this petition.

This week, after hundreds of thousands of Apple customers and Greenpeace supporters asked the company to use clean energy instead of dirty coal, it announced a significant investment in local renewable energy to power its data center in North Carolina, US.

The announcement is a great sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal and comes on the heels of a Greenpeace demonstration at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino where activists delivered messages from customers and supporters around the world.

Activists dress up as fully functioning iPhones to deliver the messages to Apple.

However, there’s still so much more to be done, and we think that Apple can go all the way.  Apple’s doubling of its solar capacity and investment in local renewable energy are key steps to creating a cleaner iCloud, but Greenpeace supporters and Apple’s customers still look forward to hearing details about how Apple plans to fulfill its commitment to renewable energy for its North Carolina and Oregon data centers in the US. Apple is still one of US energy giant Duke Energy’s largest customers, and will have to demand Duke provide the clean energy it needs to legitimately claim the iCloud is 100% powered by renewable energy.

Greenpeace will continue its campaign to push Apple and other IT giants like Microsoft and Amazon, to clean the cloud until Apple has policies to ensure that as Apple’s North Carolina data center and others continue to grow, they will grow using exclusively clean energy. To guarantee that, Apple must adopt a firm siting policy to prioritise renewable energy when it chooses locations for new data centers. Only then will customers have confidence that the iCloud will continue to get cleaner as it grows.

Join the 218,000 people who have asked Apple to clean its cloud, and ask the company to build on this progress until it has a policy to guarantee that all its current and future data centers will be powered by clean energy and not coal.

On behalf of these communities, over 100 organizations representing workers, disproportionately impacted communities, healthcare professionals, and environmentalists have repeated their request to President Obama that he use his authority under the Clean Air Act to prevent chemical disasters. And it is not just these organizations and the communities they represent, the New York Times has asked for the EPA to take action, and so has the former Administrator of the EPA under President Bush, Governor Christine Todd Whitman, whose call followed the formal request of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Congressional Republicans have stymied efforts to correct what the New York Times calls a “clear and present danger,” but the Obama Administration has advocated strongly for a comprehensive policy that would focus on preventing a chemical disaster by using safer technologies, instead of just focusing on fenceline security. President Obama has been clear that he will move his agenda forward with or without Congress and when it comes to the dangers from chemical plants, he has the tools to do just that.

According to chemical facility reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 480 chemical facilities each put 100,000 or more people at risk of a poison gas disaster. President Obama knows about this risk and in his 2008 campaign plan “Change We Can Believe In” he pledged to “Secure our chemical plants by setting a clear set of federal regulations that all plants must follow, including improving barriers, containment, mitigation and safety training, and wherever possible, using safer technology, such as less toxic chemicals.”

Now is the time for the president and the EPA to act on this campaign pledge. This Congress has become captive of the chemical companies that want their profits to trump the safety and security of the public and has failed to pass any law that would focus on disaster prevention. President Obama needs to now take the reigns and fully implement the Clean Air Act protections that will make our communities safer.

You can do your part by signing our petition and sharing our interactive map with your friends and family.

Authored by Richard Brooks, Greenpeace Canada.

White Mountains in Quebec.

Leaning back in the evening breeze, listening to the waves churning, I almost feel like I’m lying on the beach at home instead of hanging from an anchor chain near the 10 meter water mark of a cargo ship near Sao Louis in Brazil. But here I am. The Clipper Hope was due to arrive in the port days ago to pick up a load of pig iron, but for 3 days so far we’ve been preventing the ship from heaving up anchor by hanging on their chain.

Along with some other people, the captain of the ship didn’t understand at first why we were protesting at his vessel. What’s wrong with pig iron? It’s used to make steel. The answer is it is a cheap and highly destructive way to make steel, and there are better ways to do it. Pig iron is made with charcoal, which is made with huge quantities of wood, and the cheapest way to get this wood is to secretly and illegally log massive areas of remote Amazonian forest and even sometimes use slave labour to burn it up.

There is more life, and more different types of life, in this forest than anywhere else, and seeing it transformed into wasteland is one of the saddest images of what is happening to our planet. The rate of deforestation of the Amazon is once again increasing because of recent government decisions.

So I hope the captain and friendly crew of the Clipper Hope will google Greenpeace and pig iron to find our new report, and learn about the consequences of the manufacture of their cargo. I hope U.S. car manufacturers like Ford and GM will learn about where their steel comes from. I hope we can all learn about the real costs of maintaining our cheap, convenient lifestyles and choose a better way. We don’t have to destroy the Amazon, and we don’t have to destroy our future.

Emma Briggs is a climber and the Bosun onboard the Rainbow Warrior, she is from Byron Bay, Australia.

Visit our Amazon homepage to join her.