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A new EU report recommends management across all sectors for exposure to mixtures of chemicals called Endocrine Disrupters (EDs) including certain pesticides such as glyphosate linked to cancer, reproductive and neurological disorders. This research paper was requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions and commissioned, overseen and published by the Policy Department for Citizen's Rights and Constitutional Affairs. Policy Departments provide independent expertise, both in-house and externally, to support European Parliament committees and other parliamentary bodies in shaping legislation and exercising democratic scrutiny over EU external and internal policies.
Amongst the report recommendations are two key action points covering the Management of EDs across sectors including children's toys, cosmetics and materials that come into contact with food, i.e. packaging: (1): EDs should be recognized as a class of hazard of equivalent concern to carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxicants in all sectors and not only for pesticides and REACH chemicals, but also cosmetics, toys, food additives and food contact materials. 8. Management of EDs across sectors (2): In order to minimize ED exposure among EU citizens, the EU should move towards an identical management of EDs across all sectors for which ED use is very likely to entail population exposure. This includes in particular plant protection products, biocides, food contact materials and additives, consumer goods, cosmetics and toys. Established scientific facts show that: (a) hormones act at extremely low doses; (b) EDs are expected to also act at low doses, and this is proven for the most studied EDs; (c) there are methodological limitations to the approaches typically used to identify so-called safe thresholds in regulatory toxicology and (d) the approaches commonly used to identify these safe thresholds generally do not consider cumulative effects of combined exposures. Hence, one option to protect human health and make the EU regulation more coherent across sectors would be to apply a logic similar to that already in use for pesticides, i.e. that substances identified as known or presumed EDs should not be authorized (“no exposure” logic) in products with general population exposure. For the cosmetic sector specifically, a logic similar to that applied for CMRs should be used for EDs, consisting in banning known, presumed and suspected EDs in cosmetics. As a member of the EU, the UK's scientific community would have input into any actions resulting from the report's recommendations, and our MEPs ultimately would vote on any new directives. However, since Brexit and the current impasse in Parliament, once again the UK has silenced itself and also made the heath of UK citizens potentially worse and placed them at risk, given the current Trade agreements with the USA being negotiated in secret and the US' insistence in not accepting any connection between Monsanto's Round Up weed killers and cancer, reproductive and neurological disorders as a result of being exposed to the Glyphosate in the product. You can download the complete report from the Unionsafety E-Library using search word 'PETI' or 'Endocrine' Source: PETI / EU
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This study, commissioned by the PETI Committee of the European Parliament, presents the scientific knowledge regarding the health effects of endocrine disrupters, a class of hazards recognized in EU regulation since 1999.