Boeing must think radioactive waste is mighty tasty. After all, they’ve allowed plenty of it to sit at one of their research facilities and seep into the surrounding community. So naturally, some students who want the company to clean up its toxic mess at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory thought that offering a bribe of “˜meltdown morsels’ and other radioactive sweets might do the trick.

But the “Teens Against Toxins”, a group of tenth-graders at Oak Park High School in Southern California, must have realized that what Boeing wants above all is money, since the company recently filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to get out of paying for cleanup of the site. They held a “bake sale meltdown” and presented the company, which made over $68 billion last year, with a gigantic check for the proceeds. The grand total? $99.31.

Shocker: Boeing didn’t show up to accept the money. After 30 minutes of waiting around outside the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the students, some parents and community members were informed that a Boeing spokesperson was camera-shy and that as a private company, Boeing can’t accept donations.

The 2,859-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory was once home to 10 nuclear reactors, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1959 when it was run by Rocketdyne. Thirty years later, an environmental survey revealed shocking toxic and radioactive contamination. Boeing bought the site in 1996 and shut it down in 2006.

A state senate bill passed in 2007 set strict cleanup standards for the site, which is set to eventually become state parkland. But a Boeing spokesperson told MichaelMoore.com that the law “singles out the site to meet cleanup requirements that go far beyond what is required to protect citizens elsewhere in California under generally applicable state law.”

Apparently those delicious Uranium Cakes and Peanut Butter Plutonium Treats were just too bitter for Boeing to swallow – but it’s okay if everyone else eats them.

Image: lavocado

Watch out Washington, Erin Brockovich is coming your way. And it’s not a social visit. She’s on a mission to shake, rattle and overhaul the nation’s toxic chemical laws, in particular the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The TSCA, which was passed in 1976, is seriously outdated and  offers the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) no real authority to obtain information needed to evaluate whether a chemical used in home products is or isn’t a health and safety risk.

A reformed TSCA, drafted by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ) and Representatives Holida Solis (US Secretary of Labor) and Henry Waxman (CA), will be going through Congress this fall. A main component of this draft is the requirement that chemical manufacturers conduct safety testing before a chemical is used in products. The new Act would further require that the safety testing information be made available to the public.

These are actions that you would think happen automatically. Sadly, that isn’t the case. In fact, in the past 33 years, the EPA, due to its limited authority under the TSCA law, has required testing on just 200 of the more than 80,000 chemical compounds developed for products used in the home.

And that’s where Brockovich comes in. She has teamed up with the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (SCHF) coalition, Autism Society of America, Breast Cancer Fund, the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and Seventh Generation (a  leading brand of non-toxic and environmentally safe household and personal care products).

Together, they have organized a Million Baby Crawl on Washington in support of the reformed TSCA or Kids Safe Chemical Act. The Million Baby Crawl, while symbolic in nature, aims to first of all create awareness amongst parents about the need for and the importance of the Toxic Chemical legislative reform, and second, to collect a million signatures to present to Washington in January 2010 when the voting on the toxic reform legislation occurs.

Further reading: Seventh Generation for EcoSalon

Image: brunkfordbraun