Every day we use “new and improved” products brought to us by the miracles of the chemical industry – an industry that has introduced more than 70,000 chemicals into our world since the 1950’s. You’d think that before new chemicals are marketed, manufacturers would have to perform rigorous tests on them, submit them to the EPA for extensive retesting, and then gain official approval as being unequivocally safe for humans and the environment. If you thought our nation’s chemical product policy was designed to protect you in this way, you’d be wrong.

Instead, companies perform simple screening tests to determine that their products do not present any immediate harm to users: they don’t explode, burn the user or cause acute illness. Tests you would assume were standard – for example tests for effects on fetuses, infants and children – are not required under law and are almost never performed. No chemicals are monitored as a matter of course in soil, water, air or food, not to mention in wildlife or humans. According to the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit public interest watchdog organization, 80 % of all applications to produce a new chemical are approved by the U.S. EPA with no health and safety data.

In short, humans, wildlife and our environment are acting as living experiments, burdened with proving that mass-produced chemicals are harmful to human health and the environment after these chemical are used in wide distribution. Think of DDT, thalidomide, PCBs, dioxins, furans, and the numerous other toxic chemicals that circulated freely in our environment until their serious threats to health and the natural world were well-documented – often after countless preventable tragedies.

The Precautionary Principle Defined

The Precautionary Principle conversely places the burden on industry to prove a chemical is safe before putting it out on the market. The most commonly used definition of the Principle was crafted by an international group of scientists, government officials, lawyers, and labor and environmental activists in 1998 at the Wingspread Conference in Wisconsin: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically [emphasis added].”

The concept of the Precautionary Principle originated 20 years ago in Germany when acid rain from power plants was destroying the Black Forest. Out of the effort to save the forest emerged a principle of German law known as Vorsorgeprinzip, which has been translated as “precautionary principle.” But vorsorge might be more literally translated as “forecaring.” It conveys a sense of commitment, proactive action, and concern for future generations that “precaution” does not.

The Chlorine Chemistry Council called the Precautionary Principle “a lethal weapon aimed at today’s most innovative products and most promising breakthroughs,” but a number of recent events show that the Precautionary Principle is gaining acceptance and legal clout.

The Precautionary Principle in Practice

A precedent-setting ruling by the Dutch Sate Council this January invoked the Precautionary Principle, ruling as potentially hazardous a new chemical flame-retardant used in a wide variety of plastic products. The manufacturer, Broomchemie, a Dutch subsidiary of Israel’s Dead Sea Bromine Group, was unable to provide enough evidence to prove the contrary and was therefore ordered to stop production and marketing of the chemical.

In May of 2001, the US joined 90 other countries in signing the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). When ratified, this treaty will set in place a series of targets to reduce and ultimately eliminate the production of these toxic chemicals. POPs are toxic, resist breaking down in nature, and accumulate up the food chain. Twelve POPs, known as the “Dirty Dozen,” will be targeted first. These include DDT, PCBs, dioxins and furans. The first of six core principles in the treaty is especially significant: “Precaution in the face of uncertainty about the nature and extent of toxic chemical threats.”

In 1996, the European Environment Agency held a conference in Weybridge, England, which focused on hormone mimicking chemicals and on the current research on their impacts to human and other life. The conference report states that to understand these chemicals, studies need to be done on at least two generations of live animals at different stages in their lives and at varying doses of the chemicals. When you consider testing these chemicals in combination with others, the job grows exponentially. To test only the 1000 most common toxic chemicals in combinations of three would require at least 166 million experiments—an impossible scenario. The Weybridge Report, therefore, recommends that in the face of considerable uncertainty, consideration should be given to reducing the exposure of wildlife and humans to such chemicals – a decision clearly guided by the Precautionary Principle.

As the Precautionary Principle gains understanding and acceptance, we are likely to see many more challenges to the way industries currently introduce their chemicals to the world.