Latest news with #ChemSec
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
A ban on forever chemicals would be best
The researcher quoted in your disturbing report on Sweden's Pfas (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) scandal says her work feels like trying to catch a runaway train (Poison in the water: the town with the world's worst case of forever chemicals contamination, 19 June). Kallinge is one of a growing list of European towns with extreme levels of Pfas. In fact, there are tens of thousands of contaminated sites. It is time to slam on the brakes. There is a lot of talk about clean-up technologies and how these might solve the problem. But relying on clean-ups is like bailing out a sinking boat with a teacup while the crew is busy drilling new holes in the hull. Legislation is urgent and essential. Indeed, Europe has a detailed plan to ban all Pfas, and with strict time limits on transitions to safe alternatives. But now Brussels says that, instead, it intends to exclude these chemicals from consumer products only. These account for barely one-fifth of all Pfas emissions, so banning them would only slow the rate at which they accumulate in water, soil and human tissue. Such a partial ban would be a short‑sighted capitulation to commercial interests and a free‑market ideology that opposes all regulation. Even when we halt the Pfas locomotive, we will be cleaning up this mess for decades to come. Jonatan Kleimark Head of corporate sustainability, ChemSec (International Chemical Secretariat), Gothenburg, Sweden Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Euronews
20-03-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Products containing dangerous chemicals could get EU green label
ADVERTISEMENT Planned changes to criteria for sustainable investments could see cosmetics and other products containing harmful substances, including some PFAS 'forever chemicals', given the EU 'green' label despite potential risks, campaigners have warned. The amendments, buried in the small print of an 'omnibus' deregulation proposal tabled last month, could limit the list of chemicals whose presence would preclude a product from the EU's sustainable investment list to as few as 247 identified 'substances of very high concern'. Theresa Kjell, head of policy at the non-profit chemicals watchdog ChemSec, said the Commission was abandoning the 'do no significant harm' at the core of the Green Deal agenda of president's Ursula von der Leyen's first five-year term at the head of the EU executive. 'In so doing, it is also destabilising the investment environment and therefore putting economic growth at risk,' she said. ChemSec, a long-time critic of the sluggish pace of EU chemicals restrictions, warned companies could bask in the green glow of an EU sustainability label while marketing products containing chemicals such as the hormone-disrupting perfume galaxolide or the forever chemical TFA among many substances not yet restricted under EU law. But the Commission apparently enjoys considerable support for its simplification drive – which it insists is not deregulation, although even European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde said in a recent BBC interview that this is what it amounts to. President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola, whose European People's Party is on the vanguard of the push to free businesses from EU regulation, voiced support for pressing on with the simplification drive after meeting EU leaders during today's European Council summit. 'The European Parliament will play its role [in] taking the simplification drive forward,' Metsola said. 'During the next plenary, we will adopt an urgency procedure for the simplification omnibus by doing what essentially has never been done before.' The Council is expected to endorse the anti-red tape agenda during its ongoing summit. A public consultation on the proposed reform to the sustainable investment rule book runs until 26 March.
