Our North America Affairs Manager David Clement was a guest on Mornings With Joe Catanacci on the BigTalker 106.7FM discussing our “One Size Fits All” Doesn’t Fit At All campaign.
Check out “One size fits all” Doesn’t fit at all policy note
Brussels, Belgium – Yesterday, a stakeholder consultation led by the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway on the use of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) closed.
The prospect of an EU PFAS ban is as real as ever, with a number of green groups skewing the discourse towards complete avoidance. In the US, the situation is hardly different, where the PFAS Action Act will soon face a final vote in the Senate.
In response, the Consumer Choice Center’s Maria Chaplia and David Clement published articles in The Parliament Magazine and Real Clear Markets arguing that “while manmade chemicals have their risks, that risk level ultimately depends on each use case and exposure.”
Key points raised in the articles:
“PFAS can be found – but not limited to – in household items and other consumer products, medical equipment, food packaging, and firefighting foam. Their popularity can be explained by their unique qualities, such as chemical resistance and surface tension lowering properties. PFAS’ effectiveness has made them hard and costly to replace”, argue Maria Chaplia and David Clement.
“Some PFAS ban/restrictions might very well be needed and justified but banning an entire category of evolving products won’t serve the consumer. A more appropriate response would be to evaluate these chemicals and substances based on the risk they present and how they are used, rather than lumping them all together and risk enacting bad policy that will have a myriad of consequences”, said Chaplia and Clement
“For example, some of these chemical compounds are vital for contamination-resistant gowns and drapes, implantable medical devices, stent grafts, heart patches, sterile container filters, needle retrieval systems, tracheostomies, catheter guide wire for laparoscopy and inhaler canister coatings. To ban all these chemical compounds, without evaluating the risk associated with each use, puts lifesaving medical technologies in jeopardy and patient safety at risk”
“Heavyhanded PFAS regulations will also jeopardize the EU smartphone market, used by the vast majority of Europeans everyday. As cell phones and 5G technology continue to grow and require faster speeds at smaller sizes, these compounds are involved in everything from producing semiconductors to helping cool data centers for cloud computing. Forcibly removing these chemicals from the production process, especially because they present very little risk to humans, will drastically disrupt supply chains and inflate costs that will hurt low-income people the hardest.” argue Chaplia and Clement
Washington, DC – British showman and comedian John Oliver, known for his punchy and thorough rants on public policy, has set his sights on a new target: man made chemicals, known as PFAS. In his now viral rant, Oliver explains how PFAS chemicals are problematic for human health and wants all of these chemicals to be declared hazardous by law. This is, in fact, what Congress is attempting to do via the PFAS Action Act, which has passed the House and is waiting for a final vote in the Senate.
David Clement, North American Affairs Manager with the DC based Consumer Choice Center urged caution in regards to regulating these man made chemicals: ” While some bans or restrictions might very well be needed and justified, banning an entire category of evolving products won’t serve the consumer. A more appropriate response would be to evaluate these chemicals and substances based on the risk they present and how they are used, rather than lumping them all together and risk enacting bad policy that will have a myriad of consequences.”
“For example, these chemicals are commonly used to create a long list of medical devices and equipment and done so in a way that presents very little risk to human health. To declare all these chemical compounds hazardous, without evaluating the risk associated with each use, puts lifesaving medical technologies in jeopardy and patient safety at risk,” said Clement
“These chemicals are also used in the production process for smartphones, which 270 million Americans currently use. As cell phones and 5G technology continue to grow and require faster speeds at smaller sizes, these compounds are involved in everything from producing semiconductors to helping cool data centers for cloud computing. Forcibly removing these chemicals from the production process, even when they present very little risk to humans, will drastically disrupt supply chains and inflate costs that will hurt low-income people the hardest,” said Clement.
“Rather than a “one size fits all” approach to PFAS, regulators should keep in mind that risk is established by looking at the hazard a substance presents, and the exposure to that hazard. There is a significant difference between the dumping of these chemicals into water ways, which is atrocious and should never happen, and the necessary use of these chemicals in various production processes, which pose little to no risk to consumer health and safety. Failing to see the difference, and lumping all of these modern chemicals into one regulatory basket, will create a laundry list of negative externalities,” said Clement
A quick look at the European Union’s policies shows a clear tendency to over-regulate, for the sake of precaution. That is especially evident — although not limited to — in the case of consumer goods and modern agricultural practices. However, restricting GMOs and pesticides hasn’t been enough for green activists. Chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products might be next.
Similar to how pesticides are used to protect crops, chemicals in cosmetics preserve beauty products, keep them bacteria and fungi-free, and ensure that they last longer. Chemicals play an important role in making cosmetics cost-effective. Furthermore, most chemicals are used at safe levels and don’t pose any risks to our health and wellbeing. The maximum allowed paraben concentration, according to the EU’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety, is 0.8. Most beauty products use are well below that threshold. Lipsticks, for example, contain only up to 0.35 percent of paraben and 0.5 percent of the chemical can be found in bath oils, tablets, and salts.
Read the full article here
Among developed nations, one of the most significant drivers of economic growth and prosperity has been the ability of our innovators, scientists, and entrepreneurs to deliver great products to the consumers who need them.
We need only think of the advances in washing machine technology, which has freed up hours of domestic labor, plastics and silicones, which have allowed products to be produced cheaply and last longer, and more abundant use of computer chips in our appliances, which has enabled a “smart” revolution in consumer products that are saving us time and effort at home, which fueling the revolutions in artificial intelligence and medical technology.
While these innovations are beginning to also reach developing nations, however, there are existing international treaties and regulatory bodies that are making it more difficult and costly for these products to be sold or even accessed. This significantly affects the life of a consumer and their ability to provide for their families.
One such United Nations treaty is a little-known global pact known as the Stockholm Convention, which aims to regulate long-lasting or “persistent” chemical substances, and has become the unofficial world regulator for industrial and consumer products and their makeup.
Many of the substances and compounds first targeted by the convention were pesticides, industrial chemicals, and by-products that had known harmful effects to humans or to the environment. These included aldrin, chlordane, and most controversially, the malaria-killing insecticide known as DDT.
The main idea behind these restrictions, and the UN convention itself, is that these compounds take forever to break down in the environment, and eventually make their way into our bodies through food or water contamination, and could pose an eventual danger to organisms.
Unfortunately, since the convention was launched in 2001, it has gone from banning and restricting known dangerous substances to now applying cautious labels or entire injunctions on chemicals used in ordinary life and with no known or measured risk factor in humans or animal species.
Moreover, with a large international budget and limited oversight, researchers have noted how the convention’s financial implementation has often pushed developing countries to adopt restrictions or bans for the guarantee of funding alone, something that has been observed with UN-related treaties on vaping products, and may have some complications for global trade.
Now in its 20th year, the convention has repeatedly relied on the European Union’s “precautionary principle” approach when it comes to determining risk, meaning that any general hazard, no matter the risk factor, must be abandoned out of an abundance of caution. This neglects the normal scientific framework of balancing risk and exposure.
The example of the herbicide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane — known as DDT — presents one of the most glaring cases. Though it has been banned in many developed nations and blocs such as the United States and the European Union, it is still used in many developing nations to wipe out insects carrying malaria and other diseases. In these nations, including South Africa and India, the possible harm is “vastly outweighed” by its ability to save the lives of children.
The current mechanism, therefore, considers the wishes of developed nations that do not have to deal with tropical diseases like malaria and forces this standard on those that do. The scientific analysis found in the global meetings of the Stockholm Convention does not take this factor, and a host of others, into account.
With a precautionary principle like this in place, including a process led more by politics than science, one can easily see how economic growth can be thwarted in nations that do yet have consumer access to products we use on a daily basis in developed countries.
Whether it is pesticides, household chemicals, or plastics, it is clear that a global regulatory body to regulate these substances is a desired force for good. However, if an international organization enforces bad policies on middle and low-income countries, then that is a calculation that harms the potential progress and innovation in the developing world.
Originally published here
