International Conference on Chemical Safety: for environmentally sound management of chemicals

This major conference on chemical safety was held in Stockholm from 25-29 April to discuss ways of evaluating chemical safety and prevention of international traffic in dangerous toxic substances.  The conference was organised jointly by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), following a mandate from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (Chapter 19 of Agenda 21). UNCED called on these three organisations to develop international cooperation on environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals.
    The conference was attended by government representatives from 130 countries, intergovernmental institutions and public interest NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace, the Consumers Association of  Penang and the Chemical & Energy Workers Federation (ICEF).  
    The new mechanism established at the conference has been called the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS).  It will coordinate and develop international, regional and national work in the field of chemical safety.  The Stockholm meeting constituted the first session of IFCS, with further meetings now scheduled for 1997 and 2000.  Between meetings, work will be carried out by an Inter-cessional Group, composed of 26 governments, and the Forum Secretariat will be located in the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) located at WHO in Geneva.  The Forum will report to the Commission on Sustainable Development and through this to the UN General Assembly.
    Future presence of NGOs was assured with agreement that “international NGOs concerned with health, workers’ interests, the environment, consumers and industry, involved in the field of chemical safety and having official relations or consultative status with any of the Intergovernmental Participants shall be invited to participate, without the right to vote, in the Forum.” 
    In addressing the Conference, Peter Hurst of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (WWF) pointed out the urgency of the problem, as contamination from chemicals is worldwide, with pollution affecting all ecosystems from the Arctic to the Tropics, as well as land, air and water.  “Whether it is pollution from products, from processes and emissions, or from wastes, the environment is the ultimate ‘sink’ for toxic chemicals,” he said. WWF pointed out that our understanding of the impact of chemicals on the environment has been radically changing over the last five years, as scientists have begun to research and document problems that are less visible, more insidious, more difficult to measure, less predictable and potentially impossible to control with conventional risk assessment and risk management approaches. WWF ensured that the precautionary approach remained in the conference text. 

Programme areas cover:
Improving Risk Assessment—A positive recommendation allows for the identification of different types of health and environmental risk assessment.
Harmonization of Classification Packaging and Labelling—Most work has been done in this area, but some resources should be deployed elsewhere.
Information Exchange—There is a need to specify the types of information: for example more information is essential on alternatives to toxic chemicals and proliferation of cleaner production.
Risk Reduction—WWF called for an overall reduction in use and the need for registers of pollutants released into the environment.
Strengthening National Capacity—National capacity needs to be strengthened in developing alternatives and cleaner production, and not just in risk assessment and chemical infrastructure.
Illegal  Traffic in Toxic Chemicals—This area is to date the most poorly developed.

WWF International and Press Release WHO/36 Office of Information, 22/4/94.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 24, June 1994, page 21]