Introduction
A global challenge
Chemical pollution is a growing, global health and environmental threat. One in six deaths worldwide - nine million people per year - are now attributable to various pollutants.9 Hazardous chemicals alone are estimated to account for 1.8 million deaths each year globally, which is likely an underestimate.10 In the European Union (EU), studies have identified “alarmingly high” internal human exposure, especially in children, with large sections of the European population exposed to multiple substances.11
Accordingly, exposure to harmful chemicals constitutes one of the most significant health and ecological threats globally. The problem also threatens the resilience of the global economy and public healthcare systems, reducing the global gross domestic product by 2% and accounting for 7% of healthcare costs.12 As the largest industrial energy consumer and the third-largest industry subsector in terms of direct CO2 emissions, the chemical industry is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide13 while also contributing substantially to air and water pollution.14
While harmful chemicals is a global problem, this report focuses on the EU because of key ongoing and upcoming opportunities to revise EU chemicals legislation. Strengthening legislation in the EU could ultimately influence efforts to better tackle hazardous chemicals worldwide, which will be crucial as chemical pollution knows no boundary.
This report predominantly addresses exposure to substances which present, or are suspected to present, hazardous properties, thus harming human health and the environment. This report focuses on the exposure to hazardous substances and the pollution which can stem from the inappropriate management of these substances. In that context, a substance means a chemical element and its compounds in the natural state or obtained by any manufacturing process.
Impacts on children
The problem has a markedly disproportionate impact on children, defined by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as all persons under the age of 18 years. Children are more susceptible to harmful chemicals than adults on account of their smaller bodies and behavioral habits.15 Children play on the ground, in watercourses, exploring the physical world through touch and taste. Exposure can also occur before birth, during fetal development, leading to the phenomenon of "pre-polluted" children,16 and susceptibility remains elevated throughout childhood.17For several types of particularly harmful substances, such as heavy metals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), it is likely that no level of exposure is safe. In children, even small exposures to substances of this kind can irreversibly alter brain development, leading to mental disabilities and harmful alterations to reproductive systems, metabolism, and stress response mechanisms.18
The global toll on children’s lives is shocking. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, annually, over 1.7 million children under the age of five - 26% of all infant mortality - were dying from modifiable environmental factors, such as water contamination.19 Former Special Rapporteur (SR) on toxics and human rights, Baskut Tuncak, warned that those deaths “are only the tip of the iceberg,” as there is a “silent pandemic”20 of disability and disease associated with exposure to toxics and pollution during childhood, many of which do not manifest themselves for years or decades.21
Children’s rights of protection
Consequently, exposure to hazardous substances directly affects children’s fundamental and legally recognized rights. The UNCRC,22 ratified by every UN member state apart from the United States, recognizes the rights of all children to have the best possible start in life, to grow up healthy, and to develop to their full potential.23 Exposure to hazardous chemicals directly jeopardizes this aim, violating children’s legal rights to life, health, and bodily integrity. Indirect environmental degradation caused by these substances further infringes children’s right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.24Despite laws and policies intended to regulate chemical safety, hazardous chemicals are still found everywhere: in food, air, water, and everyday products. In the EU, 196 million tonnes of hazardous chemicals were consumed in 2022.25 Production has been increasing for a decade, reaching €872 billion in 2022.26 The EU has developed a large and complex body of relevant legislation, but it needs urgent strengthening to protect health and support the rights of children as a particularly vulnerable, typically overlooked population. As matters stand, children are living in a legal environment that is failing to protect them. The challenge of addressing this shortcoming is the focus of this report.
An opportunity
With the adoption of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) in 2020, the EU now has an opportunity to address past failures by enhancing regulations and adopting new legislation to uphold children’s rights more effectively.
Since adoption of the CSS, certain revisions of EU chemical legislation demonstrate some progress.27 Nonetheless, pivotal reforms of chemicals laws remain on the waiting list, at risk of quiet abandonment. Several key revisions have been shelved indefinitely, notably the adoption of an export ban on substances prohibited in the EU and a much-needed review of the bloc’s overarching chemicals law, REACH.28 Children pay the price of delay, as the status quo continues to harm their health in contravention of their rights.29 The EU must now deliver on its promises to revise its chemicals laws.
***
Footnotes
9 Fuller, R. et al., Pollution and health: a progress update, Lancet Planetary Health, June 2022; IHME, Global Burden of Diseases (GBD): Key findings from GBD 2019.
10 Fuller, R. et al., Pollution and health: a progress update, Lancet Planetary Health, June 2022.
11 HBM4EU Conclusions, reported by Vito, All Europeans are exposed to chemical substances, May 2022.
12 Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, Pollution and health: A global public health crisis, Update to the 2017 Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.
13 Ripple, W.J., et al., The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory, BioScience, October 2023; Secretariats of the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm Conventions and the Minamata Convention on Mercury, Chemicals, wastes and climate change interlinkages and potential for coordinated action, May 2021; International Energy Agency, Chemicals webpage; The Guardian, How the chemicals industry’s pollution slipped under the radar, November 2021; Friends of the Earth Germany BUND, Study Summary "Blackbox Chemical Industry", 2023.
14 OECD, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Freshwater: Monitoring and Regulating Water Quality, October 2023.
15 WHO, Don’t pollute my future! The impact of the environment on children’s health, 2017.
16 Danish Protection Agency, Exposure of children and unborn children to selected chemical substances, 2017; Govarts, E. et al., Combined effects of prenatal exposures to environmental chemicals on birth weight, May 2016; Balbus J.M., et al., Early-life prevention of noncommunicable diseases, Lancet, 2013.
17 HBM4EU Conclusions, reported by Vito, All Europeans are exposed to chemical substances, May 2022.
18 Vandenberg, L., When the dose doesn’t make the poison: low dose effects and endocrine disrupting chemicals; Hormones and endocrine-disrupting chemicals: low-dose effects and nonmonotonic dose responses, June 2012.
19 WHO, Preventing disease through healthy environments, September 2018.
20 Grandjean P., Landrigan P.J., Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity, Lancet Neurology, March 2014.
21 Report of the SR on the Implications for Human Rights of the Environmentally Sound Management and Disposal of Hazardous Substances and Wastes, A/HRC/33/41, August 2016.
22 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), 1989.
23 UNCRC Article 6 and 24, and UNICEF’s Children Version of the UNCRC.
24 UN News, UN General Assembly declares access to clean and healthy environment a universal human right, July 2022.
25 Eurostat, Chemicals production and consumption statistics, data extracted in December 2022.
26 Eurostat, EU sold production of chemicals hit a decade high in 2022, September 2023.
27 For instance, in December 2023, the EU institutions adopted a provisional agreement on the revision of the rules on classifying, labelling and packaging of chemicals: EU Commission, Commission welcomes provisional agreement on improving classification, labelling and packaging of hazardous chemicals, December 2023.
28 The Guardian, EU abandons promise to ban toxic chemicals in consumer products, October 2023.
29 EEB and CHEM Trust, Waiting for REACH: The negative impacts of delaying reform of EU chemical laws, March 2023.