wildcardenvironmentalist Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, TTIP

NGO call for EDCs to be excluded from TTIP negotiations

The ACP has joined with twenty seven NGOs in sending a joint letter to Bernd Lange MEP chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA). The committee will vote on the 28th May on whether chemicals will be included or excluded from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP. We are seriously concerned that TTIP could weaken current public health and environment standards for toxic chemicals and impede the development of new standards.

The joint letter calls on the INTA to support the opinion of the ENVI Committee to exclude chemicals from the scope of TTIP, and to integrate this in their final resolution to be voted upon on 28 May 2015.

Only yesterday US Senate rejected the Fast Track Bill which would give President Obama Fast Track powers to rush TTIP through. Which is the first hurdle its progress through the US legislative process. News item here.

Joint Letter on TTIP and EDCs

wildcardenvironmentalist Cancer Plan, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

ACP submission to the Cancer Task Force

The ACP responded to NHS Englands announcement of a new independent taskforce to develop a five-year action plan for cancer services that will improve survival rates and save thousands of lives.

Although the focus seems to be primarily on services and treatment which we agree are vital – we need the highest possible standards of care – we were very disappointed not to see environmental and occupational risk factors addressed and actioned in any of the documents referenced for the strategy. Indeed in the report, Five Year Forward View, the emphasis appears to be only on lifestyle interventions.

Although CRUK have narrowed the new cancer strategy to service provision they did acknowledge that the task force is: “A great opportunity for the cancer community to lead development of a cross-system, independent and ambitious new cancer plan……..and addressing the preventable causes of cancer will be key to seeing progress.”

We believe that unless we tackle the primary prevention of cancer i.e. stopping cancer before it starts, we are unlikely to see any improvement in the cancer epidemic. There are many barriers to action on the primary prevention of cancer; cancer is also caused by lack of political will. In our view, the biggest barrier to addressing cancer services is the lack of action on primary prevention which necessitates greater resources into services in the first place.

We sincerley hope this is a great opportunity to include the environmental and occupational risk factors for cancer into new cancer plans…without addressing these confounding risk factors we can only look forward to a cancer forever future.

Our submission can be downloaded here Submission to Cancer Task Force

 

 

wildcardenvironmentalist Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

Submission to EU Commission on the EDC consultation

Due to the intensive lobbying from the chemicals and pesticide industry the EU Commission missed its December 2013 deadline to set criteria for indentifying Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) – chemicals which are widely used, ubiquitous and harmful. The public consultation was launched in 2014 and closed on the 16/1/2015. Here is the ACP  submission to the EU EDC public consultation

The EDC Free Europe Coalition received 20,440 individual submissions onto its online platform Say No to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.

In total the EU Coommission received 27,087  responses – more information on the breakdown can be found here.

To follow and support this work please sign up to our campaign http://www.edc-free-europe.org/