WHAT weighs more than 3 kilograms, runs to 1200 pages and, allegedly, threatens to destroy Europe鈥檚 chemical and manufacturing industry while prompting 鈥渢he largest mass animal poisoning programme Europe has ever seen鈥�? Answer: the European Union鈥檚 proposed regulations on safety testing for thousands of chemicals that have all been in common use for more than two decades.
Released earlier this month, the regulations complete the set of rules aimed at giving Europe鈥檚 citizens and wildlife the most stringent protection on Earth from chemical pollution. Anyone who wants to argue for changes to the draft rules has until 10 July to do so. The signs are that the mailbags will be bulging. On one side are environmentalists, who say the regulations are too weak. They are opposed by an unlikely alliance of the chemical industry and the animal welfare movement, who want the proposals scaled down or radically changed.
The chemical industry, which will have to pay for the tests, claims the new rules will cost Europe 2 million jobs as chemical manufacturers move outside the EU. Animal welfare groups say that millions more tests on animals will be needed, and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) has labelled it Europe鈥檚 largest ever programme of mass animal poisoning.
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Since 1981, all new chemicals introduced into Europe have faced stringent safety tests. But around 30,000 products that were on the market before then now need to be tested: they range from lemon juice to vinyl chloride, which is already suspected of being a carcinogen. Phased testing should start around 2008 and end around 2020. Once the rules bite, companies will not be allowed to manufacture, import or use more than 1 tonne of any chemical that hasn鈥檛 passed muster.
The European Commission estimates that the tests will cost industry 拢2.5 billion, and that the resulting restrictions on the use of certain substances and job losses will cost 拢20 billion. But it says savings in occupational health benefits alone could approach 拢40 billion over 30 years.
Environmentalists are adamant that the programme should go ahead, even though they think some of the proposed regulations don鈥檛 go far enough. 鈥淲e were looking for increased regulation to force manufacturers to substitute more benign chemicals for hazardous ones that are toxic or bioaccumulate,鈥� says Mary Taylor of Friends of the Earth. Chemicals that accumulate in the environment and in tissues, carcinogens like benzene, and substances that mimic natural hormones and cause 鈥済ender-bending鈥� effects are among those causing most concern.
But the environmentalists are sheepish to find themselves in conflict with anti-vivisection campaigners, who accuse them of backing millions of needless animal experiments. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the first time environmental groups have had to examine the consequences of their own lobbying,鈥� says Wendy Higgins of the BUAV.
The BUAV says some chemical tests for carcinogens, for instance, are more reliable and cheaper than animal experiments. But they are held up by the OECD鈥檚 global validation process, says Higgins. 鈥淣on-animal replacements are halfway there, and we need to kick them through.鈥�
The chemical industry claims that some companies using the untested chemicals will dodge the cost of testing by moving their factories elsewhere. 鈥淲e鈥檒l see a major migration of the industry outside Europe,鈥� says Judith Hackitt, director of the UK鈥檚 Chemical Industries Association. Companies exiled from Europe could sell bulk chemicals to manufacturers outside the EU, who would export goods made from them back to Europe. 鈥淪omehow or other, the substances or the products that contain them will still come to Europe,鈥� says Hackitt.
Costs could be cut by allowing existing safety data to be used. The US Environmental Protection Agency and some companies have toxicity data on many of the chemicals due for testing. And in 1998, the worldwide chemical industry unveiled a collaborative scheme with the OECD to test 1000 鈥渉igh-volume-production鈥� chemicals by 2004. The results are now flooding in. 鈥淚f the OECD has judged a chemical to be of low concern, the international community should be willing to accept that,鈥� says Fred McEldowney of the American Chemistry Council, which represents bulk chemical manufacturers.
But whether the EU will accept data from these tests is not yet clear. 鈥淚f they鈥檝e been done in the context of the OECD, they could be mutually acceptable,鈥� says an EU spokesman. 鈥淲e have an open mind on this.鈥�