New report from ClientEarth and European Environmental Bureau

Also see the press release

Exactly a year ago, the European Commission announced it would rapidly ban thousands of the most notorious chemicals still found in consumer products and contributing to growing human infertility, serious illnesses and environmental harms. Media coverage was extensive.

It published a roadmap promising bans of the most harmful flame retardants, chemicals frequently linked to cancer but present in most homes; all bisphenols, which can severely impact human fertility but touch most Europeans daily; and all non-essential PFAS ‘forever chemicals’. Around 2,000 of harmful chemicals still found in baby diapers, pacifiers and childcare products were among the other substances to be banned. In a major improvement on past regulation, most restrictions would be grouped, to stop an industry tactic of switching regulated substances for slightly different unregulated ones. Overall, as many as 7,000 chemicals could be banned under the roadmap by 2030, a huge step up on the roughly 2,000 the EU has phased out over the last 14 years, more than any other world region.

A review of progress one year later, published today by environmental groups ClientEarth and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), shows a very different outcome is emerging. Officials have tabled bans of 14 chemical groups, on schedule. Two are strong and broad enough to stop most harms being done. Eleven other groups cover only a small number of chemicals or their uses, allowing the vast majority of pollution and its impacts to continue, while one other group is redundant. Most dossiers are draft and could still be strengthened. But as they stand, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic substances per year are set to escape bans.

Notable failures include:

• Only five of the 148 bisphenols are set to be restricted, leaving uncontrolled dozens that are known to be harming humans. Most uses of controversial BPA are set to continue. Last week, EU food safety officials announced that the average European is exposed to unsafe levels of BPA and called for a 20,000 reduction in the daily intake limit.
• A loophole will likely allow hunters to continue firing thousands of tonnes of highly toxic lead ammunition into the environment.
• The threat from chemicals with “very severe” hazards in baby nappies / diapers will continue after the Commission rejected a ban, against the advice of its experts.
• Progress has generally been slow, with legal deadlines broken in almost all cases, sometimes for years, and exemptions proposed for as long as 12 years, creating effective ‘regulatory holidays’.
• Officials suffer from lack of resources, but are wasting them by developing multiple overlapping restrictions, or targeting marginal substances.