According to the Sustainable Development Goal number 12, one of the targets is to achieve an environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment, by the year of 2020.
"That is in a year!" as Xenia Trier from the European Environment Agency points out in this FRAM seminar called 'EU research and policies on combined exposure to mixtures of chemicals'. The context of the seminar is a megatrend of increasing use of chemicals, a real challenge when it comes to achieving the sustainable development goal.
In the seminar Xenia Trier shows several examples of how increased use of chemicals also increases the risk of hazardous exposure to humans and the ecosystem, but she also recognizes the difficulties of assessing chemicals. Furthermore, she highlights challenges with current EU rules and policies. According to a review made by the EU itself, there are many different rules regulating the use of chemicals - but they are not coherrant and chemical mixtures are rarely dealt with. However, science is clear - there are well described effects of exposure to mixtures. Could a pragmatic use of factors to adress risks with increasing margin of safety be one way forward? Learn more in this video.
The seminar was held on December 13 at University of Gothenburg.