A dead end

Throughout the world, policies for regulating the production and use of chemical substances have been based on the same concepts for centuries. They were developed in a time and age when the use of chemicals was very limited and knowledge about toxic effects was scarce. First of all, it was presumed that human health and the environment could handle, or at least tolerate, the influence of chemicals. Secondly, when it became apparent that chemicals could do quite a lot of harm, it was presumed that humans and the environment would be safe if the levels of exposure could only be controlled. Thirdly, it was presumed that any chemical substance should be regarded as harmless until the opposite could be scientifically proven. And it was up to society to prove it.

Today we know that these basic presumptions were naive, but the policies remain the same. Modern society has inherited chemical regulations that are still based on ignorance. The dramatic increase in the production of chemicals and the development of hundreds of thousands of new substances has created a situation where vast resources are spent on trying to foresee the unforeseeable and control the uncontrolable. Meanwhile, chemicals are being used in great quantities and spread all over earth without adequate understanding of the possible consequences.

Regulators and the chemical industry stand at a dead end, where the old concepts have ceased to work and new approaches are needed. Therefore scientists, politicians and NGOs worldwide are calling for the adoption of new chemical policies based on facts and realistic concepts. One example of this is the demand made by governments in the European Union for a new chemical policy in 1998, and the succesive development of the REACH system.

There are many different ways to construct the details of a modern policy, but it needs to aim for a toxic free environment and be based on: