"Cancer-related chemical agents are present everywhere in our living environment. ‘Cancer-related' does not only refer to chemicals classified as ‘carcinogens', but also to substances for which there are strong indications that they (help to) cause cancer, like endocrine disrupting chemicals. They are used in many industrial sectors and in agricultural products and are also contained in household and other everyday products and objects. No need to say that humans should be exposed to the minimum and preferably not at all to these agents. In case of exposure, the risks must in any case be restricted as much as possible. This can be achieved, in the first place, by means of efficient regulations and policies.
REACH - the European Regulation for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals - is in effect since 1 June 2007. The first deadline has already passed. We wondered how REACH has progressed and how its implementation has proceeded up to present. For pesticides (the collective name for plant protection products and biocides) new regulations (for plant protection products) and a directive (for pesticides) have come into effect in recent years. For biocides a new EU Regulation is almost ready. Our country must adhere to all of these. In addition, Belgium at a federal level and Flanders at a regional level have listed a number of priorities and took a number of policy measures.
In the first chapter of the report you can read that environmental pollution has been underestimated as a cause of cancer for a long time. However, there are more and more indications that pollution largely contributes to the development of cancer. There is still quite some scientific uncertainty about the exact impact of the environment on the development of cancer, but there are more than enough scientific insights which urge us to be cautious. Chapter 1 of the report gives a short overview of those uncertainties and scientific insights.
A policy that is only targeted at chemicals which are officially classified as carcinogenic is not enough. At the symposium the VLK called for two major policy principles to be taken into account as well: the principle of physical-chemical hygiene and the precautionary principle. According to the principle of physical-chemical hygiene we should as much as possible restrict chemicals that are suspicious due to their intrinsic properties. The principle can be compared to the microbiological hygiene which was applied in the early twentieth century to push back infectious diseases. In the same way we now have to conduct a preventive policy for the chemicals in the environment. The precautionary principle states that scientific uncertainty may never be an excuse not to take measures. When there are enough reasons to assume that an activity or a product or substance can cause serious, irreversible damage to one's health or the environment, preventive measures must be taken. The measures must be cost-effective.
Both principles are required to reduce exposure to cancer-related agents in a fundamental way. In our evaluation we will be verifying to which extent these two policy principles have been taken into account."

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