From Stockholm to Rio

4 World Health • 46th Year, No. 5, September-October 1993 From Stockholm to Rio Michel Mercier In Mexico City, air pollution con go considerably above acceptable levels, and breathing this air may be os harmful os smoking. M an has known for millennia that he could improve his lifestyle through the use of chemicals. From the earliest days of metal refining to the most recent developments of high-tech materials, he has also realized that, without a certain amount of caution in using those chemicals, his improved life- style could be brought to an abrupt halt. Two thousand years ago Pliny noted a particularly high death rate among mercury miners. During the dramatic expansion of scientific knowledge in the 18th and 19th cen- turies, chemists discovered many substances that could have harmful effects on human health. The first half of the 20th century saw the appear- ance of new chemicals in almost all walks of life, but little attention was paid to their potential risks. Then three decades ago Rachel Carson, in her book Silent spring, warned the world of the danger to the environment of indiscriminate pesticide use . Pollution was a key issue at the UN Conference on the Human Envi- ronment held in Stockholm in 1972. An analysis was made of the side- effects that accompany development in agriculture, industry, transport and human settlement. Chemical pollution was identified as one of these side- effects; it was characterized as arising out of air pollutants, industrial efflu- ents, pesticides, metals and detergent components. The Conference recom- mended that programmes (to be guided by WHO) should be under- taken for the early warning and pre- vention of the harmful effects of the various environmental contaminants to which humans were being increas- ingly exposed. Other international organizations also had an interest in this area: the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) joined with WHO in estab- lishing the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) in April 1980. Assessing the health risks This programme was set up specifi- cally to produce assessments of the risk of chemicals to human health and the environment, thus providing the scientific basis on which Member States could develop their own chemi- cal safety measures. Since its concep- tion, IPCS has evaluated an impres- World Health • 46th Year, No. 5, September-October 1993 sive list of commonly used and inter- nationally traded agricultural and industrial chemicals. Hazard assess- ments have been issued for over 1200 chemicals or groups of chemicals, including drinking-water contami- nants as well as food additives, and contaminant residues of pesticides and veterinary drugs in food , the latter in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The other major objective set for IPCS was to strengthen national capabilities to prevent and treat the harmful effects of chemicals and to manage emergen- cies involving chemicals. It is the major accidents that have done more than anything else to draw public attention to the potential haz- ards of chemicals. Over the past two decades they have occurred at regular intervals: in 1976 a release of a poi- sonous dioxin gas known as TCDD at Seveso, Italy, resulted in extensive animal deaths; in 1979 a train derail- ment in Canada led to chlorine release that required the evacuation of 216 000 people; in 1984 a liquid petroleum gas explosion in Mexico City left 500 dead and 5000 injured; and, also in 1984, leaking methyl isocyanate from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed 2500 people and blinded and injured more than 200 000. One of the priority areas of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 was the quest for an international strategy for the environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals. The conference considered that IPCS should be the nucleus for this strategy, and that cooperation with other organizations having an involvement in chemical safety should be strengthened. These include a number of UN bodies and other programmes such as th~se of the Organisation for Economic Co-opera- tion and Development (OECD) and of the European Community (EC). In addition, UNCED stressed the need to extend partnership with gov- ernments, industries, trade unions, consumers and professional bodies. It has been proposed that the strengthen- ing of IPCS should be accompanied by the setting up of an intergovern- mental forum for chemical risk assess- ment and management. The key concept is that the cooperating organi- zations should pool their resources and share the workload, thereby avoiding the duplication of effort that has often occurred in the past. The programme's objectives UNCED identified six programme areas that would form the objectives of the new IPCS. s • The evaluation of the risks to human health and the environment from exposure to chemicals should be accelerated, and international agreement concerning methods of laboratory testing needs to be expanded. • Agreement on a worldwide scale is also essential for the classification and labelling of chemicals. • Mechanisms are required to make the exchange of information on chemicals and their risks easier, and to deal with major accidents and poisonings that involve them. • Activities to reduce the risks of chemicals and to develop the use of safer alternatives (ozone- friendly propellants, for instance) need to be promoted. • IPCS will also be called upon to provide assistance to countries, especially the developing ones, to evaluate health and environmental hazards, and to bring in and en- force legislation when necessary. • Finally, more information and stronger measures are needed in the fight to halt illegal international traffic in dangerous chemicals. Looking further into the future, what will be the direction of IPCS at the beginning of the 21st century? There is no doubt that the number of chemicals in commercial use will have increased still further. The ques- tion is not whether the international community is able to provide the information needed to handle present- day chemicals more safely, but whether it is capable of coordinating its various efforts sufficiently to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for information on chemicals, both old and new. • Or Michel Mercier is Director oF the Programme Far the Promotion oF Chemical SaFety (the Central Unit oF the International Programme on Chemical SaFety), World Health Organization, I 2 I I Geneva 27, Switzerland