“Neither the SAICM Secretariat nor the governments wanted to have EDCs prominently highlighted at the conference”
WECF addresses endocrine disrupting chemicals at SAICM’s 4th Session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4)
10.11.2015 | Carmen Chan
Alexandra Caterbow (WECF) and colleagues for Pesticide Action Network Asia-Pacific at the chemicals policy meeting
This month the international chemicals management community took big steps forward towards strengthening chemicals management in the healthcare sector with the progress made on pharmaceuticals, EDCs and nanomaterials at SAICM’s 4th Session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4) held in Geneva. WECF attended the conference to address endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).
There were important developments in the areas of the existing policy issues of EDCs. Although many specific actions on EDCs proposed by NGOs were lost during the negotiations with other stakeholders, some positive developments made it into the final text, such as: the welcoming of most stakeholders of the UNEP and WHO ‘State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals’ 2012 report, and the invitation to the IOMC to ‘further develop and implement the plan of work for the cooperative actions in an open, inclusive and transparent manner, and request all interested stakeholders to provide support in these efforts.’
WECF’s Alexandra Caterbow attended the SAICM conference as well and gave an interview. “Endocrine disruptors are a huge challenge because they are linked to many diseases. Neither the Secretariat of SAICM nor the governments wanted to have this issue prominently highlighted at the conference. So we developed some papers to try and get the topic high on the agenda. We now have a very solid work plan for the next years, UNEP developed that. More than 150 countries said that they welcomed the State of the Science report made by UNEP and WHO. This report is highly critized by the industry because it gives a very good and very solid scientific overview on how harmful endocrine disrupting chemicals are.”
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