On June 12, 2024, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) updated a report on regulatory challenges for hazardous chemicals that was first outlined in November 2023. The update gives more detail on four key target areas for the EU to address: (i) to provide protection against the most harmful chemicals, (ii) address chemical pollution in the environment, (iii) minimize animal testing, as well as to (iv) improve the availability of chemical data.
The chapter on harmful chemicals outlines concerns about neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, and endocrine disruption. “Further development of test methods, understanding of the toxicological modes of action and how to translate the outcome to risk management is essential to identify these hazards, facilitate safe use and take regulatory action where needed.” Some regulatory action is already underway, including that an expert committee recently approved a ban on the use of bisphenol A and related substances in food contact materials (FPF reported).
Another chapter discusses the need for improving the availability of chemical data, outlining necessary work to make knowledge on chemicals available through the value chain and to the public. “[T]here is still a lack of comprehensive information on many substances. Among those, polymers and nanomaterials deserve particular attention.” The authors explain that “historically, regulatory frameworks have considered polymers of lower hazard than the monomers” they are formed from, but now “high[er] molecular weight polymers may no longer be considered innocuous by default.”
In the report, ECHA outlines open questions around the diversity of polymers, bioavailability of substances, polymer degradation, and how to deal with micro- and nano-sized particles. Additionally, it emphasizes that the correct analytical methods to “ensure a proper assessment of the presence of restricted chemicals and chemicals falling under authorisation is also a critical aspect.”
In March 2024, FPF’s Chief Scientific Officer, Jane Muncke, together with 20 co-authors proposed a novel approach for testing food contact chemicals that includes assessing the health impacts of individual food contact chemicals and real-life mixtures with ideas for high throughput approaches that could potentially assist in alleviating some of the concerns outlined by ECHA (FPF reported).
ECHA is working on a new chemical data sharing platform, ECHA CHEM, and discussions on data sharing policy are ongoing (FPF reported). This envisioned transparency could be valuable to researchers investigating health effects. For example, a group recently investigating plastic food contact articles from five countries measured thousands of chemical signatures in both migrates and extracts, with evidence that the mixtures disrupt both the metabolic and endocrine systems, but due to gaps in transparency the researchers were only able to positively identify a few percent of chemicals (FPF reported here and here).
References
ECHA (June 2024). “Research needs for regulating hazardous chemicals updated.”
ECHA (June 2024). “Key areas of regulatory challenge.” (pdf)
