Abstract
A fully integrated Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) in respect of chemicals is crucial and must include:
• An objective evaluation of the present situation including impacts of ‘chemicals of concern’ throughout their life cycle, that incorporates sustainability issues.
• A framework that facilitates innovation of chemistry-based approaches to tackle each of the key sustainability issues.
The EU CSS only addresses adverse impacts and mainly focusses on one aspect of risk assessment, the hazard to humans from individual industrial chemicals. The proposal removes consideration of the nature and amount of exposure, which is a critical determinant of risk. It can be presumed that this is solely to simplify, and hence speed up, regulatory decisions thereby enabling more chemicals to be assessed. The linkage of this proposed approach to address any of the major sustainability issues, such as environmental pollutants is obscure. For example, the well-recognised environmental problems caused by polymers such as plastics are not considered. The proposed change in the assessment methodology lacks any scientific justification and fails to address the sustainability issues the EU and the rest of the world are facing. The authors critically discuss a comprehensive innovative evaluation methodology for the impact of chemicals.
•A critical review is presented on the European Union Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS).•An integrated assessment of chemicals should include hazard, exposure and risk information.•The CSS only addresses adverse impacts and mainly focusses on hazard to human health.•The linkage of the CSS to address major sustainability issues, such as environmental pollutants is unclear .•The authors present building blocks to improve the CSS.