Chemicals management may be getting tougher

[Guest guest]

I have been checking out the links to this article and very

interesting info. I can't tell if the links will show up but it is

good info. I listened to the Senate hearings regarding our chemicals

in our products. The date was Aug 2, 2006, on the hearings part. If

anyone can't find it I will send it. Interesting.

Chemicals management may be getting tougher

The effects of Canada's assessment of chemicals and the new European

chemicals law are likely to reverberate through the international

market.

Canada is poised to release an assessment of 23,000 chemicals, making

it the first country in the world to systematically review all of the

chemicals in current use within its borders. Coupled with the

impending adoption of a new chemicals policy in Europe, the Canadian

action could change the mix of products on store shelves worldwide,

experts say.

Rhonda Saunders

Canada's list of 4000 suspect chemicals includes bisphenol A, used in

pacifiers; di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), found in perfumes and

hairsprays; cyclotetrasiloxane, common in lip balms and conditioners;

and toluene, a solvent used in cleaning products.

In 1986, rules in Canada mandated that all newly introduced

substances undergo toxicity screening. At the time, 23,000 chemicals

already on the Canadian market were " grandfathered " in without proof

of their safety.

Now, after 7 years of study, Environment Canada and Health Canada

officials have combed through all 23,000 substances. They flagged

4000 that are toxic and either persistent or bioaccumulative or that

present the greatest potential for human exposure. Of these, 400 were

found to be persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemicals, a

combination that calls for immediate action, says Fe de Leon, a

researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Although the list was submitted to the ministers of environment and

health in September, it won't be made public until the end of the

year, says Steve son, director of the Bureau of Risk and Impact

Assessment at Health Canada. The government will conduct another

screening process for the 4000 chemicals, based on the scientific

literature and other existing data to determine whether they need to

be managed. son predicts that it will take 10–15 years to get

through all of them.

In Europe, an even slower pace of risk assessments—5 years for only

150 substances—led in part to the EU's proposed chemicals law,

Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH),

says Rob Donkers, an environment counselor with the European

Commission's delegation to the U.S. Instead of the government taking

responsibility for proving that a chemical is " unsafe to handle " ,

which is the practice in the U.S. and Canada, draft [mmm] REACH

legislation puts the onus on industry to prove that products are safe.

Expected to be adopted by the end of this year, REACH will require

companies to register roughly 30,000 high-production-volume

chemicals. Companies will have to seek authorization to use the more

than 1500 chemicals that are either PBT or cause cancer, genetic

mutations, or birth defects, Donkers says. " This information from

Canada is very important because that will enable us to quickly

establish a list in Europe for these 1500–2000 chemicals, " he says.

REACH was further strengthened on October 10, when the European

Parliament's environmental committee approved new rules compelling

chemical producers to replace dangerous chemicals with safer

alternatives when those alternatives exist.

The establishment of a list of 4000 suspect chemicals in Canada has

already raised doubts for industry over the continued use of some of

the substances, de Leon notes. Even before a chemical is listed as

being of concern, simply the fact that information is requested about

it could cause manufacturers to decide that sales in Canada are not

worth the trouble, says Levins, vice president of the chemicals

group at Cantox Health Sciences International. However,

environmentalists fear that little will change unless the government

sets aggressive timelines for further assessment of the chemicals and

takes steps to ban or eliminate PBT substances, de Leon says.

The measures taken by Canada and the EU should be adopted by the

U.S., says Mike , an environmental health scientist at the

University of California, Berkeley. California is getting ahead of

the U.S. EPA by crafting a comprehensive chemicals policy. In a

report commissioned by the California legislature, found that

the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is at the root of flaws in

the regulation of the U.S. chemical market.

's critique was echoed in testimony from the U.S. Government

Accountability Office (GAO) at an August 2 Senate oversight hearing

on TSCA. EPA hasn't adequately screened chemicals, because the burden

of obtaining data is on EPA rather than on chemical companies, said

B. son, the director of natural resources and environment

at GAO. —JANET PELLEY