Toxic chemicals in our environment threaten our rivers and lakes, our air, land, and oceans, and ultimately ourselves and our future.
The production, trade, use, and release of many synthetic chemicals is now widely recognised as a global threat to human health and the environment.
Unborn babies are exposed in the womb to synthetic chemicals.
Yet, the world’s chemical industries continue to produce and release thousands of chemical compounds every year, in most cases with none or very little testing and understanding of their impacts on people and the environment.
Chemicals out of control
In our environment: It now seems that no part of the planet is free of chemical contamination. Research shows that fish and whales caught hundreds of miles offshore, and remote areas such as Alpine lakes and the polar regions, despite being far away from industry, are no longer pristine. Rainwater in Europe has been shown to be polluted with the hazardous chemicals that are added to consumer products.
In our homes: We tested the dust in our homes and found that it contains dangerous manmade chemicals. Chemicals can accumulate in house dust because they’re added to a whole range of ordinary household products. They are rarely labelled and you probably don’t realise they’re there. Consumer products bring these chemicals into our homes, and we are exposed to these substances, unwittingly and involuntarily.
In our products: Hazardous chemicals are intentionally added to consumer products that we use everyday. Electronics, toys, shampoos, perfumes, furniture, even baby pyjamas, can all contain substances with the potential to harm health and development. Discover which products to avoid on our chemical home site.
In our bodies: So great is the number of chemicals all around us that we’re constantly exposed to multiple doses – the combined effect of which could be affecting our health. No one knows how many man made chemicals contaminate our bodies but more that 100 is a conservative estimate. The combined effect of chemicals in our bodies, including in our blood, is largely unknown. There’s particular concern about the risks to children and babies since they are the most vulnerable, and because some of these hazardous chemicals are known to affect the development of babies – even inside the womb. Chemicals released into our environment now will go on having an impact for future generations.
Hi-Tech: Highly toxic
The world is consuming more and more electronic products every year. This has caused a dangerous explosion in electronic scrap (e-waste) containing toxic chemicals and heavy metals that cannot be disposed of or recycled safely. But this problem can be avoided. We are pressing leading electronic companies to change; to turn back the toxic tide of e-waste.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of old computers and mobile phones are dumped in landfills or burned in smelters. Thousands more are exported, often illegally, from the Europe, US, Japan and other industrialised countries, to Asia. There, workers at scrap yards, some of whom are children, are exposed to a cocktail of toxic chemicals and poisons.
A Chinese child sits amongst a pile of wires and e-waste. Children can often be found dismantling e-waste containing many hazardous chemicals known to be potentially very damaging to children’s health.
Toxic trade
Instead of receiving clean technologies, too often developing countries receive toxic waste, products and technologies.
Currently the main focus of our work on toxic trade is stopping the dumping of dirty ships in Asia for shipbreaking.
This type of trade is immoral and environmentally destructive to the receiving countries and their people. It also prevents developed countries from investing in real solutions to pollution, and developing future markets in more appropriate technologies or products.
The most blatant offence has been the export of toxic wastes from developed to developing countries. Greenpeace has sought a ban on this type of toxic trade and achieved it through an international treaty called the Basel Convention.
The convention came into force in 1992 but it was a weak treaty. In 1994, a unique coalition of developing countries, and some from eastern and western Europe along with Greenpeace, managed to pass by consensus what has come to be known as the Basel Ban.
This became law in 1998 and banned waste transfer to developing countries. Greenpeace is now campaigning to:
· Prevent governments and companies circumventing the ban by practices such as ship breaking;
· Promote clean production;
· Halt the production and trade of toxic products such as the UN Environmental Programme list of the dirty dozen (the 12 most toxic persistent pollutants); and
· Stop toxic technologies such as incineration.
Solution
Substituting hazardous chemicals with safer materials is the answer to governments and industry that have failed to control the spread of dangerous chemicals around the globe.
Courtesy: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics
