Lautenberg Train Station Ads Spotlight Sen. Cory Booker

WASHINGTON—Travelers in New Jersey’s busy Frank R. Lautenberg train station will encounter four large, upper-level platform billboards spotlighting Sen. Cory Booker. The ads urge constituents to thank @CoryBooker “for protecting us from toxic chemicals and honoring Sen. Lautenberg’s Legacy.” Scheduled to go up week of June 20, the ads are sponsored by the Physicians Committee, a nonprofit of 12,000 doctors. Viewers are directed to ReformToxicityTesting.org for further details. 

 

When Sen. Lautenberg passed away, Sen. Booker was elected to take his place in the Senate. Sen. Booker also continued work that Lautenberg had started: an overhaul of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act has passed both the House and the Senate and is now ready for President Obama’s signature on June 22.

 

“The Lautenberg Act is a meaningful step forward for public safety because it promotes superior, human-relevant chemical test methods over slow, costly and unreliable tests on animals,” says Kristie Sullivan, M.P.H., vice president of toxicology for the Physicians Committee. “Our Lautenberg train station ads are a special shout-out to Sen. Booker for authoring language requiring that scientifically superior chemical testing methods are considered and used.” The station serves more than 37,000 commuters each day.

 

After passing the House in May, the Lautenberg Act was approved by the Senate on June 7, and will soon replace the deeply flawed Toxic Substances Control Act. Sens. Tom Udall, David Vitter, James Inhofe, Cory Booker, and many others accomplished this by bringing together a broad coalition of public health advocates, chemical industry representatives, and other stakeholders as well as members of Congress. Since 2007, the Physicians Committee has worked with Congress toward this goal. 

 

The new law encourages and facilitates “the use of scientifically valid test methods and strategies that reduce or replace the use of vertebrate animals while providing information of equivalent or better scientific quality and relevance that will support regulatory decisions under this title.”