The Paris Appeal

The International Declaration on Diseases due to Chemical Pollution, known as the Paris Appeal, was launched at the Paris conference on Cancer, Environment and Society on 7 May 2004 and to date has been signed by over 50,000 people, including Nobel Prize winners, hundreds of scientists and individuals. It calls for political action on seven separate points because of the development of numerous current diseases as a result of the deterioration of the environment. These include: 

• the application of the precautionary principle to all chemicals because they are persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic, or very persistent and very bioaccumulative, and constitute a grave danger for health of humans and other species, and for the environment, without waiting for the definite proof of an epidemiological link, so as to anticipate and avoid serious and/or irreversible sanitary or ecological damage
• the adoption of toxicological standards or thresholds to protect people based on the assessment of risks for the most vulnerable, i.e. mostly children and the embryo
• the adoption of the EU 2001 REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of CHemicals) initiative which details unprecedented, and overdue legislative proposals for the regulation of industrial chemicals, based on the Precautionary Principle; this initiative should be strengthened, rather than weakened following strong opposition by EU and US chemical industries. 

A background to the rationale behind the Appeal is contained in PAN Europe’s Briefing No 2 Why current European pesticide legislation fails to protect our health, published in September 2004. This discusses why the current European Union directives on authorisation of pesticides (Directive 91/414/EEC for plant protection products and Directive 98/8/EC for biocides) are totally inadequate to prevent serious threats to the health of European citizens and our environment. 
    Pesticide News readers can take further action by:

• Signing the Paris Appeal
  The International Declaration on Diseases due to Chemical Pollution invites organisations and individuals to sign up via the ARTAC website http://appel.artac.info/anglais.htm. The target is 1million signatures within a year. 
• Joining the PURE Campaign
  Information on our campaign for Pesticide Use Reduction in Europe (PURE) can be found in Briefing no. 1 and other documents on our website under PURE Campaign. We urge all interested civil society organisations to join the 90+ European organisations already signed up as PURE supporters.

Visit www.pan-europe.info

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 66, December 2004, page 19]