| 17/11/2005
- Strasbourg, France – Environmental, women’s, health and
consumer organizations, including WWF, recognized the important
step taken by the European Parliament today towards replacing
hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives, but regretted
that Members of Parliament (MEPs) exempted thousands of
chemicals from the need to provide any health and safety
information. The European Parliament
supported the obligation to replace hazardous chemicals
with safer alternatives when these are available (the
‘substitution principle’), sending a strong message to
ministers of national governments who will next make a
decision on the REACH legislation — which stands for Registration,
Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals. This requirement
is essential to end the build-up of harmful chemicals
in our bodies and the environment.
The groups warned, however, that the
failure to provide basic safety information about chemicals
will make it impossible to systematically identify and
replace the most hazardous substances, which is the one
of the principle aims of REACH. At present we lack basic
data on the environmental and health impacts of 90 per
cent of substances.
The groups therefore condemned the
decision to severely weaken crucial safety testing requirements
for all chemicals covered by REACH.
A REACH adopted on this basis will
not deliver the health and environment protection the
public needs, as it would leave thousands of chemicals
without basic toxicity data and so would hamper the identification
of harmful chemicals, such as hormone disrupters.
The Council of Ministers has the opportunity
to strengthen the legislation — when Competitiveness Ministers
meet in Brussels — by ensuring that the legislation will
help both identify and replace hazardous chemicals covered
by REACH. This is a unique opportunity to protect women,
men and children and their environment and it should not
be sacrificed for the short-sighted interests of the large
chemicals producers. |
