The UK recently issued A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment. The document sets out a UK plan “to help the natural world regain and retain good health.” The plan states that the government will publish a new Chemicals Strategy to tackle chemicals of national concern that will build on existing approaches. This new strategy will set priorities for action and detail how goals will be achieved. According to A Green Future, the plan will also support collaborative work on human biomonitoring, address combination effects of different chemicals and improve the way the government tracks chemicals across supply chains.
A Green Future commits the UK to the following actions:
- Publish an overarching Chemicals Strategy to set out its approach as the UK leaves the EU.
- Explore options to consolidate monitoring and horizon-scanning work to develop an early warning system for identifying emerging chemical issues.
- Consider how to address tracking chemicals in products to reduce barriers to recycling and reuse whilst preventing a risk from harmful chemicals.
- Work internationally to strengthen the standardization of methods that assess chemical safety to identify and share information on emerging concerns and new approaches to risk assessments.