Rug pulled out from recycling: carpet padding recycling is taking a big hit, perhaps for Dubios reasons.

Why keep costs down, or, export jobs when we can quietly "environmentalize" them? Several carpet cushion manufacturers have announced they will no longer be recycling their own re-bond product in the manufacture of new re-bond. This move is sparked by pressure from California activists protesting the presence of PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) used as a flame retardant.

The loud protests stand in sharp contrast to the following very quiet events:

* Thousands of people losing their income with no big GM layoffheadlines/fanfare, without 401(K)s, and some without even unemployment insurance. They didn't have high salary and cushy jobs--these people spent years getting up close and personal with carpet pad, with all the smells America's pets left behind.

* Immediate price increases for carpet stores and installers as they lose their recycling revenue and increase disposal costs.

* Probable large price increases as manufacturers battle for "higher grade" foam in a smaller market.

* Millions of yards of foam, enough to carpet most large counties and some states, once recycled, now grace our rivers, lakes, and landfills, along with all of the PBDEs.

* While America has invested heavily to divert only a small portion of the 6 billion pounds of carpet discarded per year, we now add almost 1 billion pounds of foam carpet pad.

* Another industry profits by burying past problems in our landfills.

This is not a search for job and market protection. It is an attempt to examine all sides and find the right answer. If only the extreme environmentalists express views, the cushion manufacturers will yield. Their only downside is selling higher-priced/higher-profit pad and it isn't their fault. All of this is at the expense of the industry, the carpet stores, the installers and the consumer.

THE SAD FACTS

The place to start is the problem, or lack thereof. There are no known side-effects of PBDEs--not one. Even in a Michigan case, where the substance was accidentally mixed in feedstock and fed directly to cows, this meat and milk went to the human food chain, and there is little evidence of detrimental effects--only a measurable difference in PBDE levels in the cows and humans.

Think of all the other chemicals we use every day that are also found in our blood. If we mixed them with animal feed, there would be no cows for food or milk. Yet, these products are used daily and considered safe when used correctly--and the levels in our blood are benign.

Activists don't know the source of the PBDEs that are being measured. Their own evidence suggests the source is probably closer to the food supply than carpet padding is. Real problems of the past that needed correcting, like asbestos, were always highlighted by "canaries" that showed the problem early. Canaries, of course, being those that work closely and personally with the substance and are the first to show signs of problems. In this case the canaries would be the recyclers. The current direction proposes the best answer is to shoot the canary.

If you want to know if PBDEs from carpet pad are harmful, look no further than the recyclers. With the warning volume as loud as it is, you'd think recyclers would be losing body parts everywhere. These people have been collecting/baling/breathing the millions of pounds of "worst of the worst" pad for years, PBDEs and all.

If PBDEs are cumulative in the blood, as is feared, recyclers should be examples of hundreds of years' worth of exposure to carpet pad and its PBDEs. If we are to eradicate their livelihood, surely there is evidence of harm. But where is the evidence? Where are the maimed recyclers?

Many recycling advocates recently began to applaud companies like Dell, who are beginning to take responsibility for their products at their end of life. The carpet pad industry led this trend and has re-consumed its product for years. That is until now, when some extremists want to saddle them with increased risks and costs. This is not because they are using a proven killing agent in their product, but because they are trying to reuse what was made years ago--when many lives were saved from fire by using this chemical that has not even been correlated to harm, much less shown as causing harm.

Some environmentalists harm their own cause when companies see risks to recycling--risk added by the extreme environmentalists' attacks. Is Dell next? It has PBDEs in its computer plastics.

Should we just go back to the 1950s and landfill everything? There will always be someone claiming "the sky is falling" over some past chemical that gets encapsulated and diluted with every loop in the recycling circle. Those that were here in the 1950s can tell you our planet was far from cleaner or better off. Our air and water ran with far more toxins than PBDE (if it is a toxin).

Now let's look at the cure, or lack thereof. The proposed cure is to throw away careers and a currently recycled product--shoot the canary. The advice seems to be that when the carpet pad and its PBDEs wash into our streams and rivers as trash, it is better than being recycled and reused.

When material is recycled, control is maintained over the PBDEs: The situation is manageable or fixable. It breaks down less when reused in new foam. When we landfill it, as is the current push, then it is guaranteed to break down--very fast--possibly in our ground water tables, rivers and lakes. So, why is that a solution?

Wouldn't it be a shame to eradicate jobs and the great recycling strides and then find that PBDEs were harmless, that the source was not carpet padding at all, or the cure was worse than the problem? We spend a lot each year to erase the quick decisions of yesteryear--and PBDEs are but one example. Let's not create another one.

THE CHOICE

Currently, companies are choosing among three approaches:

1. Riding the environmental wave to profit at the expense of their canaries, the landfills and future generations by landfilling risks and responsibilities.

2. Continuing as is--not necessarily caring as long as they are able to profit. They will ride the popular wave when it arrives.

3. Developing a more sensible approach of identifying the problem and providing appropriate solutions--not knee-jerk reactions at the expense of their consumers, their canaries or future generations.

In the end, public opinion, expressed by sales, will cast the answer in concrete--right, wrong or indifferent. If only the voice of the activists is heard, choice No. 1 is a sure winner--and many lose. It would seem we should support the one who stands up for their customers and the canaries, not burying it in the landfill--problem or not. There needs to be another voice.

Isn't the generation that grew up on carpet living longer and healthier lives than those before this re-bond "crisis?" Are there rampant problems among the re-bond recyclers? Is this a real problem or is this another occasion for people to lose their jobs over a small group shouting, "The sky is falling?"

To require a 100-percent guarantee of safety, as critics seem to want, would stifle the many benefits we enjoy and rely on today. There would be no space program; we wouldn't eat mushrooms or pork. We wouldn't be driving, flying or boating.

As a carpet installer said recently, water is known to have killed more people than PBDEs: too much, too little, too hot or too cold. Should we quit drinking? Swimming? Boating? Move away from lakes, rivers and oceans?

Let's keep this issue in perspective and not eradicate careers and increase costs over our ever-present "sky-is-falling" voices.

Those for sensible solutions should speak loudly, promoting and practicing buying decisions that support the sensible company that is heading in the right direction. Buy your pad from the companies that align themselves with sensible solutions. Tell others to do the same.

The carpet store buyer is the first one to make these choices, but the consumers are the last ones. The more they know, the less things will cost and the fewer careers will be trashed for no reason. And companies will have fewer reasons to walk away from their product's end of life.

To think this is a carpet pad only problem is naive. Recycling, by its very nature, brings past risks forward and even provides opportunities for broad-based accidents and terror attacks. If recycling is to continue to grow, there needs to be a standard by which risk is sensibly assessed and managed.

The author is president of Recyclease Inc., a Port Richey, Fla.-based carpet pad recycling company. He can be contacted at [e-mail].