The Need to Adopt an International PMT Strategy to Protect Drinking Water Resources

摘要

Protecting drinking water resources from chemical pollution is a transboundary, environmental, public health, and socio-economic concern. An expanding global chemicals market, combined with water resource stressors such as population growth and climate change, bring into sharp focus the need to manage and protect this vital resource globally, most acutely in locations consuming recycled wastewater.1 In Europe, regulations to assess, identify, control, or phase out environmentally damaging chemicals have been developed, including REACH (registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals) for industrial substances, and EU 1107-2009 specifically for plant protection products. These regulatory frameworks operate in concert with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and utilize ongoing developments in chemical screening approaches, both in silico and experimental. These regulatory approaches have helped identify persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) substances in regional and national inventories of industrial substances and plant protection products.2,3 Additionally, they provide essential information to manage or phase out priority chemicals of high environmental risk.