Campaign for Healthier Solutions

Central Coast members of Lideres Campesinas organized a protest outside the Dollar Tree store in Orcutt, CA as part of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions national week of action calling on dollar store chains to protect their customers from toxic chemicals in the products they sell. “These big companies, they have their a store in the poorest community and the poorest area of the community, they establish their store for colored people, fieldworkers, people who are not able to buy expensive products,” says Rosalba Garcia.

Jose Bravo, Coordinator of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, calls on dollar stores to do more to get toxic chemicals out of the productst they sell. "The nation’s largest dollar stores continually fail to meaningfully strengthen their chemical policies and intervene in their supply chains to keep their shoppers safe."

This week, supporters of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions are vising dollar stores in 30 states nationwide, with the support of health and environmental justice organizations, to demand products free of toxic chemicals.

On May 29, 2024, representatives of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions attended Dollar General’s annual shareholders meeting in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, urging the company to commit to eliminating chemicals of concern from its supply chain. After the company failed to make any new commitments to strengthen its chemical policy or expand its restricted substance list, representatives from the campaign delivered a letter to company executives urging additional action, and announced that they were actively testing Dollar General products for chemicals linked to health conditions like cancer, learning disabilities, and reproductive harm.

BPA disrupts the proper functioning of hormones — hence the endocrine-disruptor moniker — and has been linked to cancer, diabetes, obesity, reproductive, nervous and immune system impacts and behavioral problems. It is likely partially responsible for the worldwide dramatic decline in sperm counts over the last 50 years. Surveys in the U.S. by the Can Manufacturers Association in 2020 and 2022 found that most members were no longer using epoxy resin can linings. “Food can linings are now made with enhanced performance acrylic, polyester or other non-BPA epoxy linings,” the association wrote in a letter to the Washington state Department of Ecology. But recent studies and a survey in the U.S. by the Campaign for Healthier Solutions show that progress on eliminating epoxy resin can linings is uneven. Food cans with epoxy linings are more commonly found in ethnic and discount stores serving low-income communities.