Wednesday 13 December 2006

While the final text of REACH was not the complete disaster that it would have been if the chemical industry lobby had succeeded in all their wrecking tactics, it leaves a number of substantial problems unsolved and will continue to allow potentially harmful chemicals into the environment.

Paul King, Director of Campaigns for WWF-UK said: "Our lobbying over the last five years, and the hundreds of blood tests we have undertaken, has really paid-off. The EU is now insisting that chemicals that build-up in living organisms and those that linger in the environment for a long time will have to be replaced whenever safer alternatives are available. These are the kinds of chemicals that caused the severe environmental problems highlighted in Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring."

Elizabeth Salter Green, head of the WWF-UK Toxics Programme added: "But the EU has also made a dreadful mistake by deciding that chemicals that may cause cancer or birth defects, affect DNA or disturb the hormone system or cause other serious illnesses - so-called CMRs and hormone disrupting chemicals - will continue to be put on the market even if safer alternatives are available."

Manufacturers will be permitted to continue selling these chemicals if they can demonstrate that they can be 'adequately controlled'. But the claim that chemicals of very high concern can be adequately controlled has been refuted by numerous scientific studies, including tests undertaken by WWF on the blood of more than 400 people, which showed numerous toxic chemicals to be present in every sample. Hazardous industrial chemicals used in consumer products are also widespread in house dust, rainwater, wildlife, and the blood of unborn infants.

Elizabeth Salter Green said: "Thankfully there will be a review of REACH in six years time. So there is still much work to be done, improving some of the flawed decisions announced today."