Six years. This is the time it took the European Commission to establish a list of criteria defining the endocrine disruptors. A classification that is coming two years behind the date initially announcedand that many associations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) find disappointing. These criteria should be used to regulate the use of these substances in products such as pesticides or herbicides.
“To ensure the highest level of protection of human health”
On June 15, 2016, Brussels therefore gave its list of criteria. A substance will be defined as an endocrine disruptor in the field of pesticides if:
– it has undesirable effects on human health;
– it has an endocrine mode of action (by acting on the hormonal system)
– if there is a causal link between the undesirable effect and the mode of action.
The European Commission says it relied on the definition of endocrine disruptors by the World Health Organization (WHO). And Brussels welcomed in a communicated. “The Commission is committed to ensuring the highest level of protection of human health and the environment and that is why today we are proposing strict criteria for endocrine disruptors – based on science – that will make the EU regulatory system the first in the world to legally define these scientific criteria“declared Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission.
Negative reactions from NGOs and industry
But according to environmental associations and NGOs, the problem is that this definition is restricted to the consequences of substances on humans only, unlike that of the WHO. “It is disastrous. Normally we look not only at all the evidence found on humans, but also at what happens in animals, either on a rodent in a laboratory or in nature.“lamented Lisette Van Vliet, head of Chemistry and Health within the Alliance HEAL, a collective of 70 NGOs, interviewed by AFP.”Any possibility of doing what has been done for decades in the management of toxic chemicals is erased“, she added. Indeed, if the negative effects of a substance are observed in animals but not in humans, it cannot be classified as an endocrine disruptor according to the criteria of the European Commission. However, harm to animals is often the harbinger of harm to humans.
A definition that does not satisfy industrialists either. The European association of the phytosanitary industry (ECPA) indeed considered that the Brussels criteria did not make it possible to differentiate between substances “really harmful [de] those that pose no threat to human safety“.
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