Chemicals: Society's Achilles Heel?

摘要

Society must not underestimate the role that chemicals have to play in society, warned the Vice President of the European Commission this week. In a speech addressed to attendees of the Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development in Sweden on 12 November, Margot Wallstrom spoke of the importance of acknowledging how entwined chemicals are in our everyday lives - from clothes to "the Volvo car that brought us here," she said.rnThis being so, according to Wallstrom, gives Europe every justification to a have a piece of legislation that can be so "technical and complex" to support this - i.e the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, Classification and Restriction of chemicals (REACH).rnWallstrom spoke of the man-made chemicals that accumulate in our bodies - 300-500 synthetic substances, to be precise, "none of which were present in out grandparent's generation," the Commission Vice President said.