Those Crazy Europeans

By BJ

For some odd reason, the EU seems to think that the people who make chemicals and intend to introduce them into the marketplace should have to prove they are safe first!

The new laws in the European Union require companies to demonstrate that a chemical is safe before it enters commerce -- the opposite of policies in the United States, where regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it can be restricted or removed from the market.

Just pause and think about that for a bit. In the US, companies can produce and market whatever chemical cocktail they can come up with, and it is the responsibility of the government to prove whether or not it's harmful before it can be restricted or removed. (And let's not forget the Bush administration's attempt to ensure that companies whose products it's tame regulatory bodies have "approved" can no longer be sued if those products do damage.) Do you feel safer? If you're going to, you'll have the EU to thank.

Adamantly opposed by the U.S. chemical industry and the Bush administration, the E.U. laws will be phased in over the next decade. It is difficult to know exactly how the changes will affect products sold in the United States. But American manufacturers are already searching for safer alternatives to chemicals used to make thousands of consumer goods, from bike helmets to shower curtains.

The European Union's tough stance on chemical regulation is the latest area in which the Europeans are reshaping business practices with demands that American companies either comply or lose access to a market of 27 countries and nearly 500 million people.

From its crackdown on antitrust practices in the computer industry to its rigorous protection of consumer privacy, the European Union has adopted a regulatory philosophy that emphasizes the consumer. Its approach to managing chemical risks, which started with a trickle of individual bans and has swelled into a wave, is part of a European focus on caution when it comes to health and the environment.

I'd call the European approach conservative, under the original meaning of the word, and it is the kind of thinking I appreciate. Dumping all kinds of chemicals into the environment and ourselves is a damn good way to wind up in serious trouble, which, given recent history, we probably already are.

In more than 30 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has required additional studies for about 200 chemicals, a fraction of the 80,000 chemicals that are part of the U.S. market. The government has had little or no information about the health hazards or risks of most of those chemicals.

The EPA has banned only five chemicals since 1976. The hurdles are so high for the agency that it has been unable to ban asbestos, which is widely acknowledged as a likely carcinogen and is barred in more than 30 countries. Instead, the EPA relies on industry to voluntarily cease production of suspect chemicals.

"If you ask people whether they think the drain cleaner they use in their homes has been tested for safety, they think, 'Of course, the government would have never allowed a product on the market without knowing it's safe,' " said Richard Denison, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. "When you tell them that's not the case, they can't believe it."

One of the harshest criticisms of globalization is that companies look to relocate to places where regulatory requirements are lax and easily worked around. One of the benefits of a multipolar globe with an interconnected populace is that they can force their governments to act when they'd prefer to turn a blind eye. Thanks to the EU deciding not to go with the lowest common denominator, it appears that this is one of those cases where we get to reap the benefits.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced a measure last month that would overhaul U.S. chemical regulation along the lines of the new European approach. It would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to use biomonitoring studies to identify industrial chemicals present in umbilical cord blood and decide whether those chemicals should be restricted or banned. A study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found an average of 200 industrial chemicals in the cord blood of newborns.

Said Denison: "We still have quite a ways to go in convincing the U.S. Congress this is a problem that needs fixing." But new policies in Europe and in Canada push the United States closer to change, he said. "They show it's feasible, it's being done elsewhere, and we're behind."