Flame Retardant Controversy

"Chemists know it as Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate." Jill Rosenbaum. @jrosenbaumdc @nyt

"...To frame the issue, the video goes back to the early 1970s and a controversy that older Americans may recognize from a single word: Tris. Chemists know it as Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate. Under the shorter sobriquet, it gained national fame as a flame retardant in children’s pajamas. Its purpose was to buy precious seconds that, in a fire, might spell the difference between survival and death.

But fame turned to notoriety later that decade when research by two scientists, Arlene Blum and Bruce N. Ames, concluded that Tris is a mutagen, a gene-altering agent. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, a new agency in the ’70s, promptly prohibited its use in the sleepwear. Even though the courts then struck down the ban, children’s clothing manufacturers in effect enforced it by agreeing to keep that form of Tris out of their products. They then did the same with a new version of the compound, chlorinated Tris. But chlorinated Tris itself was never banned. As time passed, it made its way, along with an array of other chlorinated and brominated flame retardants, into the furniture found in most American homes...."
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https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/us/a-flame-retardant-that-came-with-its-own-threat-to-health.html?_r=0