Endocrine Disruptors: New Web Site with ED Lists Goes Live

Under the leadership of Denmark, five EU states, Denmark, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, have created a list of endocrine disruptors (EDs) and made it available on a new Web site. With this initiative, the five countries seek to create a uniform foundation of knowledge to drive the regulation of EDs in chemicals laws, according to a press release of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

The EDs were spread across three lists, according to their status:   

• List I contains 19 chemicals that the EU has already identified as EDs. 
• List II contains 84 chemicals now being evaluated for their endocrine-disruption potential. 
• List III contains 9 chemicals classified by national agencies as EDs but that are not yet being examined by the EU. 

The lists are to be updated on an ongoing basis. Companies will be able to keep in the loop about new developments and avoid endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The initiators see this ability as a practical solution until an EU-wide regulation is found.

Denmark, in particular, has pushed the topic for years. The Scandinavians find the speed at which the EU is developing ED regulations too slow.

The EU is now performing a Fitness Check of EU laws to determine how capable they are of controlling EDs and protecting human health and the environment. As part of the evaluation, stakeholders, citizens, and small and midsize companies were surveyed. The results are summarized in the public consultation report and the stakeholder consultation report. A final report that publishes the results of the corporate survey should appear this summer.

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