Diolch yn fawr iawn am y gwahoddiad i ddod i siarad ar y pwnc hollbwysig yma. Hoffwn longyfarch WWF a Sefydliad y Merched am arwain ymgyrch mor llwyddiannus i godi ymwybyddiaeth am y cemegau yma sydd yn effeithio ar fywyd pob un ohonon ni.

As a member of the Committee on the Environment and Public Health in the European Parliament I have been closely involved with the discussions on the proposed new chemicals legislation REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals). We have long been calling for an overhaul of the outdated European laws on chemicals but we knew that when it came we would have a fight on our hands to ensure the most stringent laws possible to protect health and the environment.

What we have at the moment is an uncontrolled, large scale experiment on our health and environment with millions of tons of chemicals. Over a hundred thousand chemicals that were already on the market before the last laws came into force in 1981, can still be marketed in Europe without being subject to the testing and labelling laws covering new products. They are in thousands of products we use every day but we have little knowledge about them. A study by the European Chemicals Bureau showed that there is inadequate information on the toxicity and ecotoxicity of 86% of the 2,500 large volume chemicals (i.e. those produced or imported in over 1,000 tons a year) on the European market. In the past ten years, risk assessments have been concluded on only 17 substances and restrictions placed on only four of them.

The chemical industry is the third largest industrial sector in the world. Europe is the biggest producer with 35% of global sales, employing 1.7 million people directly with a further 3 million dependent jobs. As well as the large corporations which produce the bulk of chemicals, there are 25,000 small and medium sized companies. The EU chemical industry exports in 2002 were worth €155 billion. The UK is one of the top four chemical producers in Europe. Chemical production has soared from a million tons a year in 1930 to over 400 million tons a year today and the increase is predicted to continue.

The European Environment Agency has highlighted the serious lack of monitoring of most chemicals, including their dispersion and concentration in water, soil, sediment, food and species. This means their affects on people and ecosystems are largely unknown. Even less is known about cumulative and combined exposure.

But we can no longer ignore the affects both on humans and the environment - not least because chemicals are turning up in increasing quantities in places where they don’t occur naturally - including our bodies.

Chemicals have appeared in breast milk, in body fat and in the liver and pancreas. They have been found in the Arctic Circle and in supposedly pure groundwater sources. Arctic people actually have the highest human concentrations of man-made chemicals and pesticides anywhere on earth - the breast milk of some Innuit women is so polluted it could be classed as hazardous. PCBs have been found in polar bears and brominated flame retardants found in deep sea fish. Generally there has been a sharp increase in allergies and diseases, sperm counts are falling and infertility rates are increasing equally rapidly.

I had my blood sampled by WWF and I tested positive for 42% of the chemicals and I had the highest number of different chemicals - 33 - of all the people tested in Wales. It sounds, and it is horrifying. What are the health affects? I could not have children. Are these chemicals in the environment around us to blame? About one in seven couples are infertile. Is it more than a coincidence that the huge increase in the use of chemicals has coincided with a decline in fertility? We don’t really know, and that’s the problem.

Of course, chemicals occur naturally and we all use man-made chemicals - in new furniture and furnishings, in soap and make up, in more and more powerful cleaning products, in pre-packed food, dry cleaning and washing products. They make our lives easier and better - or we believe they do. But we’ve forgotten that many traditional furnishing products, for instance, were naturally flame retardant, and many traditional cleaning methods are just as effective. Most, if not all, of the 400 million tons of chemicals produced every year re-enter the environment. Some break down slowly, building up in the soil and sediment. Others are so abundant they can be found everywhere.

In response to increasing demands for action, in February 2001 the European Commission published its White Paper Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy, proposing a new system for registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals. The goal was to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment, while also ensuring the efficient functioning of the internal market and competitiveness of the chemicals industry. The precautionary principle was central. The Commission proposed that all chemicals be subject to the same testing system by 2012 and all chemicals produced in volumes over one ton registered in a central database.

The Council of Ministers and Parliament broadly supported the proposals and called for their further strengthening. But the response from the industry was quite different and a major lobbying battle broke out. The campaign against REACH which involved the US chemicals industry and the US government as well as EU governments which had previously been supportive, including the UK, was one of the most aggressive ever seen.

And by the time the Commission draft proposals were published in 2003 they were significantly weaker. For example, hormone disrupting chemicals were not adequately covered and there was no requirement to stop using the most hazardous chemicals even when safer alternatives exist. The draft was put on the internet for consultation and about 6,500 responses were received, mostly from the chemicals industry. They claimed it was unworkable and unscientific and would reduce competitiveness and so cost jobs leading to massive unemployment across Europe.

In an unprecedented move, Tony Blair, Jaques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder wrote to the Commission President expressing their concerns about the affects on the economy, which seemed for them to take priority over human health and the environment.

So when the Commission published the final version of the REACH proposals in October last year, they had been further weakened. The debate has become polarised between the chemical industry which says it cannot afford to find out if its products are dangerous and those of us who say that we cannot afford not to find out.

At the moment there are several cost/benefit studies being carried out by the industry, by governments and by NGOs. The results are mixed. The UK partial impact assessment of REACH in March showed that it would cost the UK £500 million directly over 11 years. But to “break even”, REACH would need to prevent only 18 occupational cancer deaths per year. It has been difficult to find out through the Assembly government representatives in Brussels any facts or figures about the impact on Welsh industry.

A German study is about to be published but it concludes that the industry could cope with REACH. And a very interesting new study by the Nordic Council, launched by the Swedish and Danish Environment Ministers, shows that the costs estimated by the industry are grossly eggagerated. The direct cost to the chemical industry is €3.5 billion over 11 years - 0.06% of their sale revenues and unlikely to cause any harm. On the contrary, as well as the health and environmental benefits, the industry in Europe “would gain a competitive advantage from being the first to move toward cleaner and safer production and use of chemicals”.

The European Commission itself set up working groups to look at the impact of REACH. The study of the impact on specific industries was actually sponsored by the industry itself and cannot be seen as independent. The environmental and health benefits of REACH were not even considered. That report will be published early next year.

When the Dutch took over the EU Presidency in July they also set up working groups looking at different aspects of REACH, such as the substance testing and registration procedures that underpin the whole regulation together with the rules on data sharing and animal testing. They hoped to get provisional agreement with European government ministers on these issues by December, but this looks unlikely.

So at the moment we are in the middle of a process of lobbying, being bombarded with information - mostly on the dangers to industry - and preparing for the discussions in the committee. We will have a first debate at the end of this month and will discuss the report itself in March next year with a vote probably in June. By the time the report comes to the full Parliament (September 2005) the UK will hold the EU Presidency, which is of particular interest to you.

We have to have information on all chemicals and we have to deal quickly with the most hazardous chemicals. REACH will probably achieve the first (although substances produced in quantities between 1 and 10 tons are not subject to the same tests as those over 10 tons) but it is very doubtful whether rapid action will be taken against very dangerous chemicals. The timescales are long and there are several exemptions from authorisation for dangerous substances. The substitution requirements are also too weak. No chemicals should be authorised where safer alternatives exist. Generally, there needs to be more openess, less confidentiality and better access to information.

So REACH is a good basis on which to work, but we need to make it stronger. The WWF/WI biomonitoring campaign has been incredibly successful in raising awareness about the affects of chemicals on our bodies and has really brought this issue to public attention. The more it gathers momentum, the more effective it gets. But we have to remind ourselves what we are up against. The strength of the chemical industry lobbying is immense. We have nothing like their resources. But at the end of the day it’s politicians that will make the decisions and it’s people that elect politicians and hold them to account.

And that’s where you come in! We have to make sure that our lobbying is as powerful as any lobbying by industry. And it can be. A personal letter from a constituent has much more impact than a standard letter from a company - so we need hundreds, thousands of them! Arrange to meet your MEP’s and MP and AM’s - even if it’s an issue that is being dealt with in the EU now, it will come to the House of Commons and the Assembly in due course. And if MPs and AMs are being lobbied about something in Europe they will lobby us, as MEPs, too. Of course you need to persuade your MEPs to support your views, but don’t underestimate the need to lobby those who already support your views. I can speak with much more authority in Parliament if I can quote hundreds of constituents who feel very strongly about this issue. Arrange meetings like this in your area. Use every opportunity to write to the press and pass on information to other groups.

I will be doing everything in my power in the coming year to get strong, effective new laws to protect our health and environment. We can achieve that if we all work together.