Chemical Policy Reform

I chose to read the background on "Act on Early Warnings". This article focused on primary preventions and suggested that chemicals should be assumed to be dangerous until they have been thoroughly tested. It also highlighted the importance of paying attention to "clusters of harm" as a warning sign that harmful chemicals may be being used. Other things this article mentioned:

• it is difficult to connect harm to specific chemicals
• health outcomes are unknown before use since there may be long latent periods after chemical exposures
• there needs to be more effort in reducing exposures

Suggestions include:

• monitoring new programs, chemicals, and technologies closely
• looking at toxicity records and making these records public
• developing systems that do not rely on toxic chemicals
• establishing "Early Warning Committees" that will receive reports on harmful outcomes or suspicions, report these, work to make recommendations and changes, and hold accountability for actions/change