Health effects of chemicals need closer scrutiny.

Radical reforms in the use and assessment of chemicals have been proposed in a report published in the United Kingdom last week by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The report, Chemicals in Products: Safeguarding the Environment and Human Health ,warned that only 40 of the more than 30000 synthetic chemicals currently available on the UK market have been subjected to a systematic risk assessment. The long term effect of their use and dispersion into the environment is almost wholly unknown. “We are conducting a huge and unacceptable experiment on …