I joined an eye-opening presentation at the Net Positive Symposium for Higher Education, held at the RW Kern Center in Amherst last week. Heather Henriksen, Harvard University’s Chief of sustainability, opened “Translating Science into Best Practice to Deliver Healthier Materials” with the question we all should be asking: “Just how many chemicals have we banned in our country?”

The room was quiet for a couple of seconds. Then, a few numbers are thrown out. “100 . . . 50 . . . 25 . . . 15 . . ….” Crickets.

The numbers are disturbing. With over 80,000 chemicals on the market in the US, the EPA has only banned nine. Yup, nine. These nine chemicals, of course, are obvious bad actors like PCBs and asbestos. Of the 80,000 chemicals, approximately 300 of these chemicals are regulated. Meanwhile, thousands of others are being created faster than we can document. It has become impossible to predict their environmental impacts, and the human health effects usually don’t surface for generations to come and by that time it’s too late.

That’s right, children today are being born with trace amounts of synthetic chemicals within their bloodstream. The saga continues. Once a chemical is discovered to have negative health impacts—say, cancer—the market often looks to an alternative sister chemical of the same chemical class. Years later, the sister chemical is found to have the same negative impacts on our health and the environment. Can you see the pattern here?

Harvard faculty and other scientists have clearly shown the danger of certain chemicals of concern and are using their campus to test practical healthier building practices. Despite their findings, such chemicals remain pervasive throughout many common building materials and in everyday consumer products that we all assume are safe.

It’s obvious what we are doing is not working. Rather than changing one harmful chemical out for another chemical of the same class, we should be eliminating chemical classes altogether. We all should feel empowered to ask questions about these materials.