Wednesday, May 4, 2011

NGO Adds 22 More "Endocrine Disrupter" Chemicals to its SIN List

An international chemical secretariat, Chemsec, has released an update to its "Substitute it Now!" list, aka, SIN List.  The first SIN list contained 356 chemicals that the NGO felt qualified as "substances of very high concern."  SIN 2.0 adds another 22 substances based solely on "their endocrine disrupting properties."  Chemsec argues that many of these are "commonly found in toys, food packaging, and cosmetics." According to their press release:

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can interfere with our hormone system and have been increasingly linked to a range of health problems including cancer, diabetes, behavioural and attention deficit disorders, as well as impaired fertility. We are all exposed to a range of EDCs via everyday consumer products as well as via food and water.

Chemsec believes that EDCs pose a significant threat to human health, and that while the EU has committed to addressing this threat, they have "so far not properly regulated their use.  Chemsec notes that hundreds of chemicals are considered of high concern, the EU has so far only designated 46 "substances of very high concern" under the REACH chemical control law, and of those, not a single one was listed specifically for their endocrine disrupting properties.


More information on the 22 new chemicals added to SIN 2.0 can be found on Chemsec's web site.

The list of 22 can be viewed here as a PDF file.

Chemsec's full SIN List database can be searched here.

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