Common ground lacking over EC chemicals policy

The European Chemical Industry Council has expressed reservations over the European Commission's proposed chemical policy.

The long-awaited White Paper on chemicals policy, the subject of a two-year review process, includes such measures as the reversion of responsibility for risk assessment from authorities to companies, and 'increased transparency and information' about industrial chemicals.

The White Paper is an attempt to reconcile concerns over the impact of chemicals on the environment and on health with the need for the chemical industry to remain competitive. The goal of the new policy is to 'ensure a high level of protection for human health and the environment, while ensuring the internal market functions effectively, and stimulates innovation and competitiveness in the chemicals industry,' the Commission says. 'The paper also takes account of the need to increase transparency by improving access to information on chemicals and increasing the transparency of the decision making process.'

From an environmental point of view, the Commission aims to phase out and substitute the most dangerous substances produced by the industry: 'those that cause cancer, accumulate in our bodies and in our environment and affect our ability to reproduce.' This is not a total ban on chemicals, stresses environment commissioner Margot Wallström; the most hazardous chemicals will be targeted, but this will not damage the industry's profitability, she claims.

The key elements of this strategy centre around new regulations for the risk assessment and management of chemicals. The Paper proposes 'a single efficient and coherent regulatory framework which provides equivalent knowledge about the hazards of substances marketed before and after September 1981 and their uses, in order to provide coherence in the level of protection.' Industry will be responsible for testing and risk assessment, rather than national authorities, and a 'tailor-made authorisation system where stringent control is ensured for the most dangerous substances' will be introduced.

The new system for testing chemicals will replace the current system, which has a different regime for 'existing' (pre-1981) and 'new' chemicals. The system, called REACH, will have three elements: registration of basic information for all 30 000 substances produced in volumes of more than one tonne per year in a central database; evaluation of the registered information for all substances produced in quantities greater than 100 tpa, as well as those produced in smaller amounts but which represent a particular hazard; and authorisation of carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction, as well as persistant organic pollutants. The EC estimates that over 80 per cent of chemicals will only need to be registered.

'The decision is crucial to get good and reliable information on the basis of which we can start analysing the many chemicals on the market on which we have no knowledge of their effects on the environment and our health,' says competition commissioner Erkki Liikanen.

However, neither environmentalists or industry are entirely satisfied with the Paper. Friends of the Earth is particularly scathing, calling on the EU environment ministers to reject it completely. 'This half-hearted excuse for a strategy will not ban the hundreds of chemicals that are contaminating our bodies. It will not force industry to use the safest chemicals,' says FoE safer chemicals campaigner Michael Warhurst.The chemical industry, unsurprisingly, doesn't see it quite that way. The White Paper is impractical, says CEFIC. 'The introduction of increased bureaucracy will result in more testing on chemicals using more animals and slow down progress,' it says. 'More effort is needed to speed up the risk assessment process.'

The extra bureacracy could end up costing the industry some E385billion (£240billion), CEFIC says, basing this comment on the EC's estimate of E85 000-325 000 per substance (£53 000-203 000).

CEFIC is particularly concerned that the proposed authorisation procedure is based on the intrinsic properties of the chemicals, rather than on the 'real risks' they may pose. This, it warns, may lead to bans on chemicals which do not pose risks, which could in turn threaten the survival of smaller companies.

'What is needed is a streamlined testing programme based on a targeted risk assessment approach that focuses first on those chemicals that give rise to the greatest concern,' it argues. 'In addition, downstream users should be involved more in chemicals management throughout the product chain.'

But FoE still isn't convinced. 'The EC has rolled over and allowed the chemical industry to tickle its tummy,' says Warhurst.