Environmental think-tank issues chemical safety warning

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has today called for a fundamental reform of the system used by government and industry to protect people and wildlife from man-made chemicals.

The commission makes 54 recommendations for action and change in its latest report, Chemicals in Products: Safeguarding the Environment and Human Health, which is published today following a two-year study.

The commission, a leading environmental think tank, says the current regulatory system fails to prevent serious risks to human health as well as to plants, animals and the wider environment.

The commission has said that chemical "scares" and disasters of the past - with organochlorine pesticides like DDT the most notorious examples - are "likely to be repeated in the future".

The report says: "Current approaches to assessing and managing the risks of man-made chemicals in the environment are cumbersome, unsound and rely heavily on animal testing.

"We want to see a government strategy to achieve a steady, measurable reduction in the use of hazardous chemicals."

At the heart of the Commission’s concerns are some 30,000 chemicals which are used in the European Union but which "have never" been subject to comprehensive testing on any risks they pose to humans and ecosystems.

This huge backlog will not be dealt with for centuries, says the commission's report, at current rates of assessment.

It proposes a system that would "quick check" all 30,000 chemicals within three years, as opposed to subjecting each one of them to a much slower, more expensive and exhaustive analysis. They would be assessed according to their toxicity, how long they lasted in the environment before being broken down and their tendency to accumulate in the bodies of animals.

(GMcG)