Rachel's Precaution Reporter #84
Wednesday, April 4, 2007

From: NutraIngredients.com ................................[This story printer-friendly]
April 4, 2007

CODEX'S PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE INCLUSION THWARTED

[Rachel's introduction: The opponents of precaution won an important victory this week -- preventing the European Union and others from embedding the precautionary principle in United Nations food safety standards.]

By Stephen Daniells

The International Alliance of Dietary/Food Supplement Associations (IADSA) has revealed that [the] latest attempts to insert the precautionary principle into Codex's draft risk analysis standards for food safety have been foiled. [Codex is short for Codex Alimentarius, a food-standards organization that is part of the United Nations. Its meetings and its decisions tend to be dominated by the food industry. --RPR editors]

The news marks the third unsuccessful attempt by the EU [European Union] and other countries to include the principle in key Codex documents, and could represent that last hurdle for adoption without the inclusion of the precautionary principle.

David Pineda, IADSA's manager of regulatory affairs, told NutraIngredients.com: "We are very happy with the outcome of this week. This new decision by the committee means there are fewer possibilities to introduce the precautionary principle [into the Codex framework]."

The precautionary principle allows governments to take certain preventive measures for foods in cases where scientific evidence on the safety of the food is uncertain, and many governments and other organizations believe that it is used to create unjustified trade barriers.

"The new document just accepted by the committee appropriately follows an earlier one by excluding the precautionary principle, an action needed to help assure fair opportunities for trade in supplement products," said Dr John Hathcock VP of scientific and international affairs of the Council Responsible Nutrition (CRN USA).

The full Codex Committee of General Principles (CCGP) in Paris this week debated the new draft and, after rallying of both government and non-governmental organisations -- notably the US Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN USA) -- agreed to omit the precautionary principle. To enter the Codex framework, the Commission must adopt the Committee's draft.

Pineda said that whether or not the Commission accepts the document as a Step 5 [document up for revision] or Step 8 [accepted document], this week's decision means there are less possibilities to introduce the precautionary principle.

"The introduction of this principle has been consistently rejected since the Codex principles were first drafted. However, the text is at an intermediate stage of the Codex procedure and changes can still be made. There could, therefore, be attempts to include this principle into the text during the next Commission meeting later this year which will have to consider this week's decision of the CCGP," said Pineda.

Copyright 2000/2007-Decision News Media SAS

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From: Washingtion Toxics Coalition .......................[This story printer-friendly]
April 4, 2007

WASHINGTON STATE LEGISLATURE BANS TOXIC FLAME RETARDANTS

[Rachel's introduction: The Washington State Legislature this week banned all forms of brominated flame retardants -- a class of chemicals that have been found in breast milk at increasing concentrations in the past decade.]

Olympia, Washington -- The Washington State Legislature has passed the nation's first ban on all forms of the toxic flame retardants known as PBDEs. The Senate passed ESHB1024, sponsored by Rep. Ross Hunter (D- Medina), by a 41 to 8 margin at noon today. Senator Debbie Regala (D- Tacoma) sponsored the companion bill in the Senate. The bill now goes to the governor for signature.

"Washington state is leading the way for improving the health and safety of our children," said Hunter, who has sponsored the legislation for three years. "We've come up with a common-sense strategy for preserving fire safety while getting rid of chemicals like PBDEs that build up in our environment, in our bodies, and even in mothers' breast milk."

Major manufacturers, including HP, Dell, Sony, Panasonic, and Phillips, have already stopped using PBDEs in their products. Sen. Regala applauded the bill's final passage, saying "Companies have proven that we don't need toxic chemicals like PBDEs to make effective products. It's up to us at the state level to move the rest of the industry toward safer practices."

The Washington State Departments of Ecology and Health requested the legislation, which is supported by Governor Gregoire, three state fire associations, the Washington State Nurses Association, the Washington Medical Association, and many others. The bill is the first one of the four Priorities for a Healthy Washington to head to the Governor's desk. While other states have passed bans on the penta and octa forms of PBDEs, which have been phased out of manufacture, Washington is the first to act on the deca form. Deca has by far the highest production volume of the PBDE forms.

"Fire fighters are concerned about preventing fires and reducing exposure to toxic chemicals, because we're on the front lines in both cases," said Keven Rojecki of the Washington State Council of Fire Fighters. "Fire fighters are already exposed to so many deadly carcinogens, it is critical that safer alternatives be used to ensure products are fire safe. This bill is a victory for protecting the health of firefighters and the public from harmful toxic chemicals."

The legislation does the following:

* Bans the use of the penta and octa forms of PBDEs, with limited exceptions, by 2008

* Bans the use of the deca form in mattresses by 2008

* Bans the use of the deca form in televisions, computers, and residential upholstered furniture by 2011, as long as a safer, reasonable, and effective alternative has been identified by the state departments of Ecology and Health and approved by fire safety officials

"This legislation is about doing the right thing to protect families and our environment from the harmful effects of PBDEs," said Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way. "We're doing the responsible thing-banning the chemical and working with alternative fire retardants so we don't trade one danger for another." Priest added that he was very concerned about the possible link between PBDEs and irregular brain development in fetuses. This measure, he says, is the only sure way to break that connection.

As the measure gained momentum, the bromine industry, the most significant opponent to the legislation, employed tactics that included testifying as fire safety organizations and widely distributing a mailer with misleading information.

"With the passage of this legislation, Washington is a safer place to raise children," said Laurie Valeriano, Policy Director for the Washington Toxics Coalition. "Scientific facts and disease prevention won out today over chemical industry scare tactics and hype."

Three hundred health care professionals signed a letter supporting the ban on PBDEs, citing harmful health impacts from PBDEs including learning and behavioral disorders, memory impairments, disruption of thyroid function, reproductive effects, and cancer. The letter's authors note that substantial evidence shows the buildup of PBDEs in people, orca whales, and the environment, and new studies find that the deca form breaks down into other forms of PBDEs that have already been phased out.

"This action by the Washington State legislature marks a crucial step forward for the health, development and learning of Washington's children." said Barry Lawson, MD, Immediate Past President of the Washington Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics said, "By phasing out PBDEs, we can safeguard our children from exposures to these persistent toxic chemicals and act on our responsibility to provide them with a healthier future."

"This is truly a case where prevention is essential," said Judy Huntington, MN, RN, Executive Director of the Washington State Nurses Association. "By passing this legislation, we are making vital progress in protecting our state's children, families and workers from permanent yet preventable harm."

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Gregg Small Executive Director Washington Toxics Coalition 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Suite 540 Seattle, WA 98103 Phone: 206-632-1545 Extension 113 Fax: 206-632-8661 gsmall@watoxics.org

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From: New York Times .....................................[This story printer-friendly]
April 3, 2007

DRUGS ARE IN THE WATER. DOES IT MATTER?

[Rachel's introduction: "Some say the spread of these substances in the environment is an example of how the products of science and technology can have unintended and unpredictable effects. In their view, when the knowledge about these effects is sketchy, it is best to act to reduce risk, even if the extent of the risk is unknown, an approach known as the precautionary principle." -- New York Times]

By Cornelia Dean

Residues of birth control pills, antidepressants, painkillers, shampoos and a host of other compounds are finding their way into the nation's waterways, and they have public health and environmental officials in a regulatory quandary.

On the one hand, there is no evidence the traces of the chemicals found so far are harmful to human beings. On the other hand, it would seem cavalier to ignore them.

The pharmaceutical and personal care products, or P.P.C.P.'s, are being flushed into the nation's rivers from sewage treatment plants or leaching into groundwater from septic systems. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers have found these substances, called "emerging contaminants," almost everywhere they have looked for them.

Most experts say their discovery reflects better sensing technology as much as anything else. Still, as Hal Zenick of the agency's office of research and development put it in an e-mail message, "there is uncertainty as to the risk to humans."

In part, that is because the extent and consequences of human exposure to these compounds, especially in combination, are "unknown," the Food and Drug Administration said in a review issued in 2005. And aging and increasingly medicated Americans are using more of these products than ever.

So officials who deal with these compounds have the complex task of balancing reassurance that they take the situation seriously with reassurance that there is probably nothing to worry about. As a result, scientists in several government and private agencies are devising new ways to measure and analyze the compounds, determine their prevalence in the environment, figure out where they come from, how they move, where they end up and if they have any effects.

In many cases, the compounds enter the water when people excrete them or wash them away in the shower. But some are flushed or washed down the drain when people discard outdated or unused drugs. So a number of states and localities around the country have started discouraging pharmacies, hospitals, nursing homes and residents from disposing of drugs this way. Some are setting up "pharmaceutical take-back locations" in drugstores or even police stations. Others are adding pharmaceuticals to the list of hazardous household waste, like leftover paint or insecticides, periodically collected for safe disposal, often by incineration.

For example, Clark County, Wash., has a program in which residents with unwanted or expired drugs can take so-called controlled substances, like prescription narcotics, to police stations or sheriffs' offices for disposal. They can drop noncontrolled drugs at participating pharmacies, and 80 percent of the pharmacies in the county participate.

In guidelines issued in February, three federal agencies, including the E.P.A., advised people with leftover medicines to flush them down the drain "only if the accompanying patient information specifically instructs it is safe to do so." Otherwise, the guidelines say, they should dispose of them in the trash (mixed with "an undesirable substance" like kitty litter to discourage drug-seeking Dumpster divers) or by taking them to designated take-back locations.

Worries about water-borne chemicals flared last summer when researchers at the United States Geological Survey said they had discovered "intersex fish" in the Potomac River and its tributaries. The fish, smallmouth and largemouth bass, were male but nevertheless carried immature eggs.

Scientists who worked on the project said they did not know what was causing the situation, or even if it was a new phenomenon. But the discovery renewed fears that hormone residues or chemicals that mimic them might be affecting creatures that live in the water.

In a survey begun in 1999, the agency surveyed 139 streams around the country and found that 80 percent of samples contained residues of drugs like painkillers, hormones, blood pressure medicines or antibiotics. The agency said the findings suggested that the compounds were more prevalent and more persistent than had been thought.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration started looking into the effects of residues of antibiotics and antiseptics in water, not just to see if they might affect people but also to assess their potential to encourage the development of drug-resistant bacteria.

Reports of contamination with pharmaceutical residues can be alarming, even when there is no evidence that anyone has been harmed. In 2004, for example, the British government reported that eight commonly used drugs had been detected in rivers receiving effluent from sewage treatment plants. A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was "extremely unlikely" that the residues threatened people, because they were present in very low concentrations. Nevertheless, news reports portrayed a nation of inadvertent drug users -- "a case of hidden mass medication of the unsuspecting public," as one member of Parliament was quoted as saying.

Christopher Daughton, a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency and one of the first scientists to draw attention to the issue, said P.P.C.P. concentrations in municipal water supplies were even lower than they were in water generally because treatments like chlorination and filtration with activated charcoal alter or remove many chemicals. Dr. Daughton, who works at the agency's National Exposure Research Laboratory in Las Vegas, said he believed that if any living being suffered ill effects from these compounds, it would be fish and other creatures that live in rivers and streams.

Dr. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes of the ESWE-Institute for Water Research and Water Technology in Germany brought the issue to scientific prominence in 1999, in a paper in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. They noted that pollution research efforts had focused almost exclusively on "conventional" pollutants -- substances that were known or suspected to be carcinogenic or immediately toxic. They urged researchers to pay more attention to pharmaceuticals and ingredients in personal care products -- not only prescription drugs and biologics, but also diagnostic agents, fragrances, sunscreen compounds and many other substances.

They theorized that chronic exposure to low levels of these compounds could produce effects in water-dwelling creatures that would accumulate so slowly that they would be "undetectable or unnoticed" until it was too late to reverse them. The effects might be so insidious, they wrote, that they would be attributed to some slow- moving force like evolution or ecological change.

Initial efforts concentrate on measuring what is getting into the nation's surface and groundwater. The discharge of pharmaceutical residues from manufacturing plants is well documented and controlled, according to the E.P.A., but the contribution from individuals in sewage or septic systems "has been largely overlooked."

And unlike pesticides, which are intentionally released in measured applications, or industrial discharges in air and water, whose effects have also been studied in relative detail, the environmental agency says, pharmaceutical residues pass unmeasured through wastewater treatment facilities that have not been designed to deal with them.

Many of the compounds in question break down quickly in the environment. In theory, that would lessen their potential to make trouble, were it not for the fact that many are in such wide use that they are constantly replenished in the water.

And researchers suspect that the volume of P.P.C.P.'s excreted into the nation's surface water and groundwater is increasing. For one thing, per capita drug use is on the rise, not only with the introduction of new drugs but also with the use of existing drugs for new purposes and among new or expanding groups of patients, like children and aging baby boomers.

Also, more localities are introducing treated sewage into drinking water supplies. Researchers who have studied the issue say there is no sign that pharmaceutical residues accumulate as water is recycled. On the other hand, the F.D.A. said in its review, many contaminants "survive wastewater treatment and biodegradation, and can be detected at low levels in the environment."

Some say the spread of these substances in the environment is an example of how the products of science and technology can have unintended and unpredictable effects. In their view, when the knowledge about these effects is sketchy, it is best to act to reduce risk, even if the extent of the risk is unknown, an approach known as the precautionary principle.

Joel A. Tickner, an environmental scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, says that it is a mistake to consider all of these compounds safe "by default," and that more must be done to assess their cumulative effects, individually or in combination, even at low doses.

In his view, the nation's experience with lead additives, asbestos and other substances shows it can be costly -- in lives, health and dollars -- to defer action until evidence of harm is overwhelming.

Others say the benefits of action -- banning some compounds, say, or requiring widespread testing or treatment for others -- should at least equal and if possible outweigh their costs.

"You have to somehow estimate as well as possible what the likely harms are and the likely benefits," said James K. Hammitt, a professor of economics and decision sciences at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

And while it is possible that some of the tens of thousands of chemicals that might find their way into water supplies are more dangerous in combination than they are separately, Dr. Hammitt said in an interview, "it's perfectly possible that they counteract each other."

Anyway, he said, assessing their risk in combination is a mathematical problem of impossible complexity. "The combinatorics of this are truly hopeless."

Given all this uncertainty, policy makers find it difficult to know what to do, other than continuing their research. Studies of "the fate and transport and persistence" of the P.P.C.P.'s will allow scientists to make better estimates of people's exposure to them, Dr. Zenick said, and "to assess the potential for human health effects."

But even that normally anodyne approach comes under question because of something scientists call "the nocebo effect" -- real, adverse physiological reactions people sometimes develop when they learn they have been exposed to something -- even if there is no evidence it may be harmful.

"The nocebo effect could play a key role in the development of adverse health consequences from exposure even to trace elements of contaminants simply by the power of suggestion," Dr. Daughton wrote recently in a paper in a special issue of Ground Water Monitoring and Remediation, a publication of the National Ground Water Association, an organization of scientists, engineers and businesses related to the use of groundwater.

In fact, the idea that there are unwanted chemicals in the water supply has many characteristics that researchers who study risk perception say particularly provoke dread, regardless of their real power to harm. The phenomenon is new (or newly known), and the compounds are invisible and artificial rather than naturally occurring.

But scientists at agencies like the Geological Survey say it is important to understand the prevalence and actions of these compounds, even at low levels. If more is known about them, agency scientists say, researchers will be better able to predict their behavior, especially if they should start turning up at higher concentrations. Also, the Geological Survey says, tracking them at low levels is crucial to determining whether they have additive effects when they occur together in the environment.

Comprehensive chemical analysis of water supplies "is costly, extraordinarily time-consuming, and viewed by risk managers as prompting yet additional onerous and largely unanswerable questions," Dr. Daughton wrote in his paper last year.

But it should be done anyway, he said, because it is a useful way of maintaining public confidence in the water supply.

"My work is really categorized as anticipatory research," he added. "You are trying to flesh out a new topic, develop it further and see where it leads you. You don't really know where it leads."

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From: Health and Safety at Work ...........................[This story printer-friendly]
March 30, 2007

NANOSCIENCE: MORE RESEARCH AND TRANSPARENCY WANTED

[Rachel's introduction: The French National Advisory Committee on Ethics calls for a precautionary approach to nanotechnology -- more research on the effects of nanotechnology before deploying it widely.]

France's National Advisory Committee on Ethics (CCNE) published an opinion on the ethical implications of nanoscience and nanotechnology for health in early March. The French experts call for more basic research and greater transparency to improve understanding of how nanoproducts may affect humans. They cited the EU's new chemicals legislation, REACH, as a good precedent.

The Committee takes issue with the fact that only 0.4% of world nanoscience and nanotechnology spending ($40 million out of a total $10 billion) goes to research into risks and side effects.

The CCNE warned on the global attitude that privileges technologic performance and commercial profitability and regrets that so little worldwide nanotechnologies expenditure are dedicated to the study of risks and side effects.

Thus recommendations follow the precautionary principle, which implies more [the need for] fundamental research on risks before diffusing nano-applications. It also implies more transparency on nanotechnologies researches that is not currently effective because of the requirements for confidentiality related to industrial applications.

Finally they recommend the creation of a European [nanotechnology] law like REACH on chemical products, based on transparency and an extreme vigilance of nanotechnology's consequences on individual liberties.

The CCNE was founded in 1983 to give advice on ethical problems and social questions induced by advancements in scientific knowledge in the fields of life sciences, medicine, and health. This is a completely independent committee and its role is only consultative. It is made up of representatives of the main philosophical and spiritual families, people qualified in the field of ethics (researchers, doctors, nurses, politicians, jurists).

Copyright 1998-2005 ETUI-REHS

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Rachel's Precaution Reporter offers news, views and practical examples of the Precautionary Principle, or Foresight Principle, in action. The Precautionary Principle is a modern way of making decisions, to minimize harm. Rachel's Precaution Reporter tries to answer such questions as, Why do we need the precautionary principle? Who is using precaution? Who is opposing precaution?

We often include attacks on the precautionary principle because we believe it is essential for advocates of precaution to know what their adversaries are saying, just as abolitionists in 1830 needed to know the arguments used by slaveholders.

Rachel's Precaution Reporter is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.

As you come across stories that illustrate the precautionary principle -- or the need for the precautionary principle -- please Email them to us at rpr@rachel.org.

Editors:
Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
Tim Montague - tim@rachel.org

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rpr@rachel.org

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