Archived press release

Retailers must act on chemical risks, says new study from foe

27 March 2002

New scientific techniques, such as “expression profiling”, are having a revolutionary impact on our understanding of how chemicals affect our bodies, a new report from Friends of the Earth says today [1]. Advances in science mean that it will soon be possible to trace the effects of chemicals to specific products, increasing the liability of product manufacturers and retailers where products contain chemicals which may affect human health.

Product manufacturers currently know little about the impact of the chemicals they use on humans, and many retailers do not know which chemicals are in the products they sell. But the new report from Friends of the Earth shows that biomedical research is beginning to enable fast assessments of the subtle impacts caused by man-made chemicals and will soon enable individuals to identify how they are being affected. This will open up huge new opportunities for litigation, Friends of the Earth believes.

The Crisis in Chemicals Update finds that:

• Chemical industry scientists now believe that expression profiling - a new technique examining the effects of chemical exposures on the genes expressed in cells - is now fit to be a standard toxicological method. DNA arrays (used to analyse gene expression) containing 13,000 genes relevant to human toxicity have already been constructed.
• Researchers are making progress in characterising the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals, and new expression arrays will shortly be generating far more information about the nature and impact of such chemicals.
• Scientists are discovering significant individual genetic susceptibilities. For example, scientists have identified that individuals affected by the petrol additive MTBE and organophosphate sheep dips are more likely to have less effective breakdown enzymes.

Dr Michael Warhurst, report author, said:
These remarkable new scientific techniques are revolutionising our knowledge about the toxic effects of chemicals. The impacts on industry are going to be huge. Retailers will be forced to take responsibility for the effects of the chemicals they sell.

Politicians also have a responsibility to ensure that the new EU-wide laws on chemicals, currently being drafted, lead to greater transparency about which chemicals are used, as well as precautionary action on persistent and bio-accumulative chemicals and chemicals which can interfere with the human hormone system.

Notes:

[1] See Crisis in Chemicals Update at:
www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/crisis_chemicals_update.pdf (PDF format)

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust