Chemical Watch has reported that officials from Europe and the US are planning to have a formal meeting on 15th October 2014 to discuss increased co-operation on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).
This comes as there are increased concerns among many that the EU-US “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP), currently being negotiated, may undermine the regulation of EDCs in Europe. CHEM Trust has already joined with a large number of other groups to call for chemicals to be excluded from TTIP.
This meeting – which isn’t ‘for the time being’ part of the TTIP trade negotiations – has been welcomed by the chemical industry, according to Chemical Watch.
CHEM Trust is rather less convinced:
However, NGOs in Europe have expressed their concerns about the impacts of any formal co-operation between the EU and US on endocrine disruptors.
Gwynne Lyons, policy director of ChemTrust and a nominated stakeholder expert of the Echa endocrine disruptor expert group, says: “The EU process is moving very slowly already, and regulatory collaboration with the US can only make things worse. The US system has failed to regulate chemicals, including endocrine disruptors, effectively, so the US will almost certainly be a barrier to progress,” she adds.
Ms Lyons says co-operation on developing test methods and prioritisation methodology might sound useful, but there is a “hidden agenda to make sure only the most potent, and probably no longer used, chemicals fall under a blunted regulatory axe”
