EU's Efforts to regulate Endocrine Disruptors (EDCs)

info@pan-europe.info (paneurope)
Mon, 18 Dec 2017 09:26:32 +0000
What we do

Yet another impasse in European Institutions’ efforts to regulate Endocrine Disruptors (EDCs), chemicals that interfere with hormonal systems causing significant negative effects on reproduction, growth and brain development among others.

At the Standing Committee on Plants Animals Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) Pesticides legislation meeting on the 4 July 2017, after years of delays, Member States (MS) representatives voted in favour of the European Commission's proposal on scientific criteria to identify endocrine disruptors for plant protection products. While this outcome was vastly praised by the European Commission as “a great success”, civil society groups, including PAN Europe however expressed regret toward the decision, as according to them such criteria would “fail to provide an adequate level of protection of public health and the environment” as they are too lax and require too high a burden of proof to effectively deem a chemical has endocrine disrupting properties.