Research

From regulating toxic substances to producing sustainable chemicals and products

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Abstract

Global multilateral environmental agreements on chemicals, such as the Stockholm Convention on POPs or the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC), have initiated to regulate listed toxic chemicals on global level with 182 and 161 Parties, which have respectively ratified these conventions. These Conventions have triggered the scientific assessment on global level according to certain criteria, such as POP properties. However, such Conventions have a limited scope with currently 30 POPs listed in the Stockholm Convention and 41 chemicals listed in the Rotterdam Convention. While there is agreement on these POPs, screening ca. 100,000 chemicals revealed that several hundred might meet POPs criteria1 . Overall, increasing consumption and product diversity drives ever-increasing production and use of chemicals. This puts more and more pressure on ecosystem and human health from local to global scale, suggesting that conditions are transgressing the safe operating space for chemical pollution and exposure. In order to address this urgent problem, we suggest moving beyond regulating toxic substances toward a production of chemicals and products, which is in line with local to global capacities to cope with chemical pollution, i.e. an economy that is sustainable in absolute terms. This requires integrating knowledge about human and ecosystem health into chemical and product design, and understanding the limits of ecosystems and human health for handling chemical exposure.