Commission strives to reduce the negative health effects of pollution 

Heightened concerns that illnesses such as cancer or asthma are closely linked to pollution were the driving forces behind the Commission's new Environment and Health Action Plan 2004-2010.

For instance, the European Environment Agency (EEA) estimates that, in large European cities, an annual 60,000 premature deaths are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution (between six and nine thousand for France alone according to the French Agency for Environmental Health and Safety). And the "dramatic" increase in asthma and allergies over the past 50 years are attributed by the EEA to changes in environmental pollution. Still according to the same source, a further 10 million people in Europe are exposed to environmental noise levels that can result in hearing loss.

Published by the Commission on 9 June, the plan comprises 13 action points aimed at improving the coordination between the health, environment, and research sectors. The actions are divided into the three following areas:

• Monitoring: Developing indicators to measure the link between environment and health and understand the routes pollutants take from their source to the human body. This would for example include 'biomonitoring' (taking regular samples of blood, urine or hair) to measure human exposure to environmental pollutants.
• Research: Focusing research on four priority diseases (asthma/allergy, neuro developmental disorders, cancers and endocrine disrupting effects) to 'fill the knowledge gap'
• Communication: Developing citizen's awareness to help them make informed health choices. Other actions include training to health professionals to make sure they are alert about environment and health interactions.

 

The Green Group in the European Parliament reacted angrily to what it calls a "seriously flawed 'action plan' on health and the environment" that leaves the lion's share to research instead of legislative initiatives. Monica Frassoni, Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group said "the Commission's only approach to the protection of children against environmental pollution is research, research, and more research. This 'action plan' is, in fact, a 'plan of non-action' on the environment and health that is in stark contrast to the Parliament's concrete demands for preventive action." In an unusually clear-cut statement, the Greens added "the Commission has proved to be too scared to propose any effective measures to tackle environmental factors that cause disease in children. So SCALE may as well stand for 'we Stopped Caring About Legislating for the Environment'".

In an official statement, the European Chemical Council ( CEFIC) said the plan "can be a good basis" to tackle environmentally-triggered childhood diseases, "provided it is based on sound science and considers all environmental factors that contribute to the onset of disease". Those, the organisation said, include "physical, biological, chemical, life-style, and socio-economic" factors. Speaking to EurActiv, Caroline De Bie said the draft put forward by the Commission in the consultative process placed too much emphasis on the chemicals industry and too little attention to other factors influencing environmentally-triggered diseases. "We have witnessed a substantial improvement. The final plan is much more balanced than the first draft," De Bie said.

A spokesperson for the oil companies' European association for environment, health and safety in refining and distribution (CONCAWE), told EurActiv that "the interaction between environment and health is far more complex than commonly understood". He pointed that the scientific work needed to develop reliable risk estimates was "a very time-consuming process," which "can sometimes take as much as 15 years". He emphasised "the importance that future initiatives are coordinated and aligned with other Commission initiatives already underway, such as CAFE, REACH, etc."

Speaking on request of anonymity, a Commission official told EurActiv that the stakeholder negotiations that led to the final version of the plan had been "very difficult". "Industry has been lobbying a lot," the official said, the problem being to strike a balance between the request for swift legislative action from the environmental groups and industry pressures to delay further legal steps until more research is being made. While admitting that "there is still a lot that we don't know", the official pointed out that "there is still a lot that we can do".