The report calls for new chemical regulations to protect children’s health

Nations must start testing and regulating chemicals and chemical products as closely as current systems that protect prescription drugs or risk rising rates of chronic disease among children, according to a New England Journal of Medicine report from a group of experts writing under the name Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health.

Global chemical inventories contain an estimated 350,000 products, such as manufactured chemicals, chemical mixtures and plastics. Despite the risks of environmental pollution and human exposure, the production of synthetic chemicals and plastics is subject to insufficient legal or policy restrictions.

That regulatory vacuum must be replaced with new laws that prioritize health protection over rampant production of chemicals and plastics, said the co-authors, who include Boston College epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, MD, environmental law scholar David Wirth, biologist Thomas Chiles and epidemiologist Kurt Straif.

“Under the new laws, chemicals should not be considered harmless until they are proven to harm health,” the authors said. “Instead, chemicals and chemical-based products should only enter and remain on the market if their manufacturers can determine through rigorous, independent pre-market testing that they are not toxic at expected exposure levels .”

In addition, the authors say that chemical manufacturers and brands that market chemical products should be required to monitor their products after they are marketed, in the same way that prescription drugs are monitored to detect any negative long-term health effects. evaluate.

The call to action is the result of a two-year project by a group of independent scientists from 17 high-profile scientific institutions in the US and Europe. The report was developed to enable a coordinated approach to reducing the ever-increasing number of chronic diseases affecting children around the world.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children today, the authors note. Their incidence and prevalence are increasing. Emerging research links multiple NCDs in children to manufactured synthetic chemicals.

Over the past half century, NCDs in children have risen sharply:

• The incidence of cancer in children has increased by 35%
• Male reproductive birth defects have doubled in frequency
• Neurodevelopmental disorders now affect one in six children, and autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed in one in 36 children
• The prevalence of asthma in children has tripled
• The prevalence of obesity in children has almost quadrupled and led to a sharp increase in type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents
• Certain chemicals have led to a reduction in IQ and therefore enormous economic damage

Most synthetic chemicals and related products are produced from fossil fuels: gas, oil and coal. Production has increased fiftyfold since 1950 and is expected to triple again by 2050. Environmental pollution and human exposure are widespread.

Yet the production of synthetic chemicals and plastics is subject to few legal or policy restrictions. Unlike pharmaceuticals, synthetic chemicals are marketed without prior assessment of their health effects and virtually without post-market monitoring for longer-term adverse health effects.

Less than 20% of these chemicals have been tested for toxicity, and even fewer for toxic effects in infants and children. Links between commonly used chemicals and diseases in children continue to be discovered with disturbing frequency, and it is likely that there are even more yet unknown links.

Protecting children from the dangers of chemicals will require a fundamental overhaul of current legislation and a restructuring of the chemical industry, the co-authors write.

Protecting children’s health from manufactured synthetic chemicals will require a fundamental shift in chemical legislation, taking a more precautionary approach and prioritizing health protection over the unrestricted production of synthetic chemicals and plastics, in particular:

• New laws requiring chemicals to be tested for safety and toxicity before being allowed on the market
• Mandatory chemical footprint, which looks a lot like its better-known cousin, the carbon footprint
• Safer chemicals, reducing dependence on fossil carbon feedstocks, developing a diverse range of safer, more sustainable molecules and manufacturing processes
• Policy reform, create a new legal paradigm for chemical management at the national level and a new global chemicals treaty

“Pollution from synthetic chemicals and plastics is one of the great planetary challenges of our time,” said lead author Landrigan, director of Boston College’s Observatory on Planetary Health.

“It’s deteriorating quickly. The continued uncontrolled increase in the production of fossil carbon-based chemicals endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s reproductive capacity.”