15/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The WWF has stated in a press release that, according to recent calculations by the European Commission, the cost of identifying and gradually eliminating harmful chemical products, as proposed by the Commission in its controversial REACH legislation, could cost the chemical industry 2 billion EUR over ten years, and users 5 billion EUR (assuming that the industry will pass its costs on downstream). These costs should not be added together as some have done, says the World Wildlife Fund, whose director, Tony Long, added: "identifying and phasing out chemicals that pose a threat to the health of our planet and its inhabitants will costs less than 0.04% of annual chemical industry sales" (in 2002, according to the press release, these sales reached over 520 billion EUR in the EU alone).