THE use of chemicals around the world is worsening. Artificial substances that are in the nature of chemicals improve products used by consumers but all too often, people and the environment are exposed to risk.
That chemicals are omnipresent in our lives is evidenced by chemical-laden cosmetics to clothing to computers and smartphones. A smartphone, as an example, counts with different raw materials from plastics to chemicals that ensure preferred color, resistance to sunlight or low flammability. Different materials including rare earths, glass, ceramics and others complete the contents of a smartphone. One can imagine the consequence of the amount of waste produced by electric devices and electronic goods as well as the risk exposure of informal sector workers engaged in recycling those products.
Much food for consumption is dependent on chemical-produced agriculture, i.e., fertilizers, pesticides. Houses and buildings where people live and work contain a multitude of chemical substances. Travel requires a lot of energy, the generation of which requires many different chemicals with different chemical reactions. The result is chemically polluted air.
Water, including groundwater and soils, are also contaminated by, among others, plastic waste, industrial effluents and unmonitored landfills.
Worse is more products nowadays include some kind of plastic. More than 140 different chemicals can be used in the production of plastic. These substances have different functions. They make the plastic flexible, soft, hard, flame retardant, transparent, etc. Even recycled plastics have been known to contain many banned chemicals or restricted hazardous substances which are long-lasting. Many of them threaten human health or have negative environmental impacts, but the public is not informed properly as companies are not legally bound to disclose risks in full.
To be more specific, there are consequences from chemicals which tend to be overlooked. Chemicals in everyday products like plastics have been linked to declining sperm counts and brain damage in babies. There are even products that contain persistent organic chemicals, a category of long-lasting toxic chemicals that can travel far from where they were used, affecting communities around the globe. Some of the “forever” chemicals have even been found at the summit of Mt. Everest. The Lancet Global Commission on pollution and health estimates pollution leads to 9 million premature deaths.
All this leads us to chemical safety. Basically, chemical safety is about ensuring that neither people nor the natural environment are exposed to hazardous contamination. It implies understanding what concentrations and doses lead to what impacts; what kind of usage leads to what kind of pollution that may harm humans or nature. This requires extensive testing to understand, among others, whether a product has toxic impact on people or animals; whether it causes cancer; and to what extent it is decomposed by microorganisms, radiation or other processes in the natural environment and/or treatment plants.
UNEP and WHO
At the global level, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are the leading agencies involved in the international program for the sound management of chemicals. Environmental and health agencies at the regional level are similarly in charge of chemical safety issues. An example is the European Union regulations on classification, labeling and packaging of substances and mixtures, and its rules on registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals. At the national level, the Philippines has its Republic Act 6969, or the 1990 Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Control Act, and its implementing rules and regulations.
Be that as it may, many government departments in developing countries do not so far consider sound chemicals management as something to which attention must be drawn. Or possibly, they lack the needed expertise and institutional capacities. At the other end, the huge variety and volume of thousands of chemicals render it hard, if not impossible, to manage them appropriately while at the same time, the chemical industry is continuously expanding its marketing operations worldwide. All this, despite the unprecedented sense of crisis and urgency on climate change.
UNEP’s conclusion is that humankind is wide off the mark in its global chemical outlook. Vast amount of hazardous chemicals keep polluting the environment. Take note that pollution occurs not only during production of chemicals but also during the product’s life cycle and through waste.
First steps by EU as model
Aware that chemicals are playing an even greater role in all spheres of people’s lives, the European Union formally adopted a policy to ensure that future production or application of chemicals will neither harm human beings nor the natural environment. This is embodied in the EU’s Chemical Strategy for Sustainability which envisions new safety and sustainability standards.
In the past, the EU had the most stringent chemical regulations in terms of registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals as well as in classification and packaging. The new strategy calls for a revision of the regulations in place to ensure comprehensive information concerning all chemicals produced in or imported into the EU.
In the context of the strategy, the most important initiatives are the following: 1) gradual ban on the most dangerous substances; 2) minimization of application of problematic substances; and 3) introduction of new duties to declare the chemical content of products.
Sound chemicals management for sustainability
Of late, environmental nongovernmental organizations have pushed the need for sound chemicals management as the third pillar of any sustainability strategy along with the protection of biodiversity and climate. In that connection, a UN convention on chemicals management similar to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change could be of great help. It could define an upper limit for chemical intensification similar to the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. But prior determination needs to be done on how much chemistry exactly does humankind need and how much can the global ecosystem cope with.
This needs a science-policy interface referring to a mechanism to help translate science for policymakers. Scientists should distill their knowledge for decision-makers in governments to collectively understand the nature and scale of global challenges like worsening global chemical and hazardous substances use. This could be done by an intergovernmental panel on chemicals similar to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change.
In the final analysis, the use of chemicals and hazardous substances must be reduced and managed responsibly, and strict safety standards must be observed.