A Call for Improvements in Chemicals Registration Approaches
In an editorial in the March issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM), Tham Hoang, Auburn University, calls for “enhancing regulation through registration and permission processes for chemical use to minimize and prevent their long-term environmental impacts is vitally important.”
Arguably, humanity has benefited from synthetic substances, yet, some are harmful, many persist and accumulate, posing risks that often become evident only after prolonged use. A major challenge of chemical pollution lies in the way chemicals are managed. Hoang notes that, “the production and use of synthetic chemicals and their environmental impacts are regulated by various governmental frameworks and agencies. The regulatory process can, therefore, be different, depending on the chemical and the requirements of a country or region. In general, synthetic chemicals are regulated through registration frameworks that include environmental risk assessment of produced and used chemicals. Chemicals with low environmental risk can be registered for production and use, although high environmental risk chemicals might not meet the environmental and health safety requirements for registration.” Hoang then explains why that approach, as implemented, has at times underestimated risks and not been adequately proactive of the environment. He states that “although various approaches have been developed to better assess and predict the potential environmental and health impacts of new chemicals for registration, their assessment is generally based on the results of short-term (mostly acute) toxicology studies under laboratory conditions rather than long-term studies in field conditions.” Relying on short-term acute toxicology studies can lead to underestimation of environmental risks. This could happen for persistent substances or those that degrade into more potent forms.
Hoang points to multiple instances where chemicals were allowed into the environment and their long-term impact was not noted, and he gives DDT and PCB as examples. To avoid past mistakes, he calls for enhancing regulation through registration and permission processes for chemical use that aim to minimize and prevent long-term environmental impacts. He notes that the most current legislations in the EU and the US lean heavily on short-term exposure studies and recommends chronic exposure studies in field relevant conditions, such as mesocosm studies. He contends that “evaluation of population and community effects would be more appropriate than acute exposure studies evaluating toxic effects on individual species of organisms.”
Read the full editorial “Management of environmental pollutants: efforts have been made but the past lessons were not fully learned” online.
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