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Europe leads world in chemical safety
The European Union has passed the world’s strongest legislation
governing chemical safety and testing. Registration, Evaluation and
Authorization of Chemicals, known as REACH, will require comprehensive
testing of thousands of chemicals found in products in everyday use.
Chemicals in a wide range of products, from cosmetics to computers,
automobiles to pesticides and many more must now undergo testing to
determine their effects on human health and the environment. Evidence of
a buildup of chemicals in human breast milk and in wildlife were
incentives behind the EU’s move to introduce stronger regulation of
chemicals.
After years of debate and thousands of amendments, REACH was adopted by
the European Parliament in November 2006 and the European Council of
Ministers in December 2006. Stavros Dimas, EU Environment Commissioner
noted, “This agreement will represent a marked improvement in the
protection of health and the environment. It will reduce chemical
related disease and will allow users and consumers to make informed
choices about the substances they come in contact with. It will also
encourage innovation and give a strong incentive to industry to replace
dangerous chemicals with safer ones.”
US President George Bush and the US chemical industry fought the
legislation tooth and nail, calling it unworkable, excessive and a
threat to US companies. In the end, while the legislation is still the
strongest in the world, industry won major compromises which weakened
REACH’s impact.
REACH requires companies manufacturing or using chemicals to
establish that they are safe. It requires extensive toxicity testing for
10,000 chemicals used in volumes over 10 tonnes annually. An additional
20,000 chemicals used in amounts between 1 and 10 tonnes will be
required to register basic safety data, although not all will require
extensive testing. A new European Chemicals Agency will decide which
chemicals used in amounts under 10 tonnes will require further testing,
based on evidence they may be carcinogens, reproductive toxins, hormone
disruptors, or that they accumulate or persistent in the environment.
Chemicals determined to be most hazardous may be authorized for only a
five-year period. At present, once a chemical is approved for market, it
can remain their for decades without being reviewed. “These new rules
will make a huge difference in protecting people’s health, both at work
and in everyday life, and in safeguarding our environment,” claims Guido
Sacconi of the Italian Socialist Party, a major supporter of the
legislation.
The compromise which exempts many lower volume chemicals from full
testing was a victory for industry. A coalition of seven major
environmental groups fears this change “would leave thousands of
chemicals without basic toxicity data, and so would hamper the
identification of harmful chemicals such as hormone disrupters.”
Of the over 70,000 chemicals in use today, more than 90% have not
been tested for toxicity to humans and the environment. Presently,
chemicals which were used before 1981 in Europe, 1976 in the US and 1988
in Canada, are not required to undergo any toxicity testing. Unless
Canada and the US follow Europe’s example, this will continue in North
America.
One of the most contentious parts of REACH would have made it
compulsory that companies substitute safer alternatives for chemicals
which are carcinogenic, mutagenic, reproductive toxins or hormone
disruptors. In the final legislation, the substitution requirement was
watered down. REACH will allow companies to argue that risks of using a
hazardous chemical are adequately controlled, or that social and
economic benefits outweigh risks or that suitable alternatives do not
exist. In exchange for dropping the requirement for substitution for a
wide range of chemicals, substitution requirements were strengthened for
a smaller number of very hazardous substances, which are classified as
persistent, toxic and which accumulate in the environment. Trade unions
representing workers who are the first and most extensively effected by
working with toxic chemicals, along with environmentalists and public
health advocates, argued that a strong substitution clause was a
critical part of REACH.
A “right to know” clause was another focus of fierce debate. The
draft legislation ensured that products containing hazardous chemicals
would be labeled. The right to know clause was adopted by the European
Parliament but dropped from the final legislation due to industry
pressure. Jonas Sjostedt of Sweden’s Socialist Party commented that his
party voted in favor of REACH “without enthusiasm” because the proposal
was “radically weakened.” But, he added, “A weak REACH is better than no
REACH at all”.
Close to 40 impact studies evaluated the costs and benefits of
adopting REACH . An initial EU document established that costs to
industry would be $2 billion to $6 billion over the initial 11 year
phase in period set for chemical testing, while over $58 billion would
be saved in healthcare costs over three decades. A study commissioned by
the European chemical industry council surprisingly confirmed the
European Commission’s own extended impact assessment, showing that
health benefits far outweighed costs. The health benefits in this study
mainly related to cancer prevention.
A later study commissioned by the European Trade Union Movement and
carried out by researchers at the University of Sheffield found that
additionally, every year REACH could help avoid 50,000 cases of
occupational respiratory diseases and 40,000 cases of occupational skin
diseases caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals in the EU. Over a ten
year period, this would amount to a savings of 3.5 billion euros in
sickness benefits. These benefits were calculated based on the original
version of the legislation, which included mandatory substitution of
safer alternatives and testing of all chemicals used in volumes over 1
tonne.
In February 2006 a study carried out at the request of the
Commission’s environment directorate concluded that REACH as adopted
would also save a minimum of 150-500 million euros by the end of 2017,
and 8.9 billion by 2041, mostly in areas such as purification of
drinking water, disposal of dredged sediment and incineration of sewage
instead of disposal on farmlands.
Each study looked at issues not included in previous studies, which
means the full economic benefits of REACH are many times greater than
the costs.
The controversy over REACH underlines the glaring hole in chemical
testing and evaluation throughout the world, in both developed and
developing countries. Even with the many compromises made, REACH is far
in advance of chemical safety legislation in the rest of the world,
including Canada and the US.
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