HE scan program toxic chemicals Europe’s largest discovered that a large part of the population was exposed. “Alarming” levels of such compounds, especially children. These amounts can cause serious illness. The culprit of the situation is the proliferation of a wide variety of chemical products that do not have inadequate guarantees of safety for health and are found in everyday products of all kinds.
The European Initiative for Human Biological Monitoring (HBM4EU) is a five-year program covering 116 government institutions, laboratories and universities. Their research found the presence of the 18 most problematic chemical groups in the urine and/or blood samples of more than 13,000 people from 28 European countries.
It’s not a low-intensity risk, quite the opposite. Researchers have discovered that the population is exposed to “alarming” levels of hazardous chemicals, especially children, according to the program’s coordinator.
“Weak EU laws”
The origin of most of this situation is Weak EU laws “allowing dangerous uncontrolled use of chemicals” The two organizations participating in the program, according to the European Environment Bureau (EEB) and the CHEM Trust.
Despite the scientists’ findings and demanding stricter laws, Brussels plans to significantly loosen its commitment to ban the most harmful chemicals In consumer products, according to a draft impact assessment to which the European Institutional Observatory (CEO) has access.
More than two years ago, European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans promised that “as a general rule, the use of the most harmful substances in consumer products will be banned”.
Brussels plans to significantly loosen its commitment to ban the most harmful chemicals
However, the European Environment Office (EEB, a group of 150 environmental organizations) Fears that the Commission has backed out from its original intentions. Instead of including all products in the new ban, it would now only ban a maximum of 50% or a minimum of 1% of products, “whatever. Will allow continued public exposure to highly hazardous chemicals”, according to a statement from BEV.
The new, softened targets “cannot prevent serious damage to health, including cancer, infertility, obesity, asthma and neurological diseases.”
In its Chemicals for Sustainability Strategy, the European Commission has committed to ban the most harmful chemical compounds in all consumer products. Review of EU Chemical Safety Law, REACH. According to the EBB, the review was promised by the end of 2022, but EU commissioners decided to postpone the review after pressure from the German chemical industry.
European institutions will meet on 19 July to adopt the regulation on fluorinated gases in heat pumps and air conditioners. This decision can be a decisive step to prevent major contamination by chemical compounds due to leaks or poor maintenance.
Tatiana Santos, head of BEV’s Chemicals division, said: “The EU’s failure to control harmful chemicals is reflected in the contaminated blood and urine of all Europeans. But, Commission poised to allow the most harmful chemicals to continue to be used Although the savings in healthcare costs will be much higher than the costs that the industry will bear, they are at least in half of the products they are currently used in”.
“The short-term interests of a lobby”
Each day of delay brings more pain, sickness, and even premature death.. The withdrawal of EU legislation could be the nail in the coffin of the Green Deal, fuel cynicism and undermine confidence in the European Project if the Commission does not deliver on its promise of detox products. It’s time to wake up and put people above others. short-term interests of an economic lobby”added.
Stefan Scheuer, Senior EU Policy Spokesperson for the CHEM Trust, said: “The systematic disregard of regulations by chemical companies puts people and the planet at risk as they move from selling one harmful chemical to selling another. 1000 days ago, the European Commission promised to solve this problem and to toughen the EU’s rules on chemicals. President von der Leyen must honor his commitments and issue stricter rules without delay”.
According to Hogar sin Tóxicos, the Spanish organization collaborating with the EBB, the serious shortcomings of the current REACH Chemical Safety Law that need to be corrected include its “extraordinary slowness, Many of the tens of thousands of synthetic substances circulating in the EU are not adequately regulated.“.
In addition, this regulation supports the underestimation of real risks by ignoring the so-called risks. “cocktail effect”In other words, people are exposed to a mixture of not just one, but many different substances at the same time. Despite this, current regulations “only assess the risk of exposure to an isolated substance at a time,” according to Carlos de Prada, director of Hogar sin Tóxicos.
Plasticizers were found in urine samples of all children and adolescents studied.
“Substances that appear to have no effect on their own are known to have a much greater effect when combined,” he adds.
Another serious flaw in the European regulation condemned by the BEV is allowing an infinite number of substances based mainly on toxicity data provided by the manufacturers themselves, often those who provide insufficient information to the authorities.
It also declares that the risks of individual substances have been assessed and that when a substance is restricted or prohibited, so-called “unfortunate substitution” is allowed, in which it is replaced by another substance of the same family and less studied. have similar harmful effects.
Some results:
- plasticizers: An alarmingly high exposure to plasticizers was found in the European population, although it is currently subject to stringent regulation. Plasticizers were found in urine samples of all children and adolescents studied. Plasticizers have since been shown to be harmful to human reproduction. A reduction in average exposure to regulated plasticizers was observed, but exposure to all results in a higher health risk for 17% of children and adolescents in 12 European countries. Increased exposure to new substances replacing ‘old’ plasticizers.
- PFAS (eternal chemicals): Perfluorinated substances (PFAS) were found in the blood of all young people tested in Europe. Up to a quarter of them are exposed to concentrations where adverse health effects cannot be ignored. Research has shown that the harmful PFASs found are mainly already banned but highly persistent substances. Therefore, they continue to circulate without stopping and indestructible. According to HBM4EU, these data suggest that all PFASs should be banned together, especially since many of the substitutes have similar harmful properties to currently regulated PFASs.
- Mixtures: Another subject studied was the analysis of mixtures of various chemical products. During biomonitoring, a wide variety of industrial chemicals were found in the bodies of the people tested. Precisely one of the aims of this research is to evaluate the health effects of this cocktail of concurrent chemical products. The sum of all these causes may result in greater-than-expected effects.
Reference article: https://eeb.org/european-citizens-alarmingly-high-chemical-exposure/
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