Brussels, 21/10/2004 (Agence Europe) - Fourteen EU environment and health ministers who agreed to undergo blood tests organised by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) last June all have chemical products in their bloodstream. And not just traces. A total of fifty-five industrial chemical substances were detected, 53% of the 103 substances screened by the laboratory carrying out the analysis. The blood tests identified substances which everyone is exposed to in their daily lives given that they are used in fire-resistant sofas, non-stick frying pans, pizza boxes, flexible PVC, fragrances and pesticides. Many of the chemicals were persistent, bio-accumulative and capable of disrupting the hormone systems of wildlife and people. Some of them have been banned for several years but continue to be detected in the human body. The highest number of chemicals found in any one minister was forty three and the lowest was thirty three. 37 chemicals on average were detected out of all the ministers tested Twenty-five substances were present in all the ministers: one flame retardant, two pesticides and twenty two PCBs.
The results of this study published on Tuesday by the nature preservation organisation came as no surprise. They confirm the conclusions of a similar test undertaken by Commissioner for the environment Margot Wallström and other MEPs (EUROPE 7 November 2003). Whatever the results, what they do reveal is a need for a new stricter EU policy on chemical products and back up the WWF and its strong support for the tough REACH regulation, which puts human health and the environment above industrial interests. Karl Wagner, Director of the WWF's Dtox campaign declared that, "The Ministers are all contaminated with industrial chemicals whose effects are largely unknown. It is hard to believe that legislators have been willing to allow this uncontrolled experiment to continue for so many years. The chemical industry argues, apparently seriously, that it cannot afford to find out if its products are dangerous. The WWF says that for the sake of all life on our planet, including our own, we cannot afford not to find out".
German Christian Democrat Karl-Heinz Florenz, who chaired the environment and public health committee at the EP believes that these results go in the direction of what he has been saying, namely that there needs to be an order of priority substances to be examined and precise criteria for this evaluation (EUROPE 20 October p 13). Florenz asserted that, "The WWF analysis backs up my demand for chemical products entering into contact with consumers should be examined first of all…in the three or five years following the entry into force of the REACH directive".