In Europe, citizens absorb hundreds of industrial chemicals, with phthalates, bisphenol A and PFAS considered a “serious public health problem”, the European Environment Bureau (EEB) sounded the alarm on Friday 8 November, referring to the results of the largest human biomonitoring study, which has been validated by the WHO.
According to this study (HMB4EU), most of the population is contaminated by persistent and toxic chemicals. Of even greater concern is that children have higher concentrations of some substances than their mothers, as well as “alarming” levels of PFAS.
“Children are born ‘pre-polluted’, with more substances in their bodies than their parents. This is threatening our future and the costs of inaction are getting too high. The EU should protect current and future generations; business as usual is no longer an option. It should prioritise exposure prevention and protection as a human right”, said EEB expert Tatiana Santos.
The NGO announced that it had written to the President-elect of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the same day to inform her that REACH legislation on chemicals is regularly violated in the Member States.
“Only 43 of the 1,400 targeted hazardous substances are strictly controlled, yet companies are allowed to continue using them 99.54% of the time”, the organisation writes. The EEB wants the EU to regulate chemical mixtures, not just individual substances, and as a precautionary measure, to provide for the phasing out of persistent chemical substances present in the human body.
The HMB4EU programme (€74 million) has collected blood, urine and other biological samples from thousands of children, adolescents and adults in more than 20 European countries to verify the levels of human contamination for 18 types of chemical products of greatest concern, including flame retardants, pesticides, plasticisers and PFAS. See the study on page: http://bit.ly/2NxvoGh (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)