On May 24, 2023, nations at the 76th meeting of the World Health Assembly, adopted a resolution on “the impacts of chemicals, waste, and pollution on human health.” Among other things, the resolution calls upon Member States to
- “[scale] up work on plastics and health to enable better information of the potential human health impacts associated with plastic” (FPF reported);
- “further explore, recognize and act on the linkages between chemicals, waste and pollution and other health priorities… such as maternal and child health” (FPF reported); and,
- “engage in the ad hoc open-ended working group… to prepare proposals for the science-policy panel to contribute further to the sound management of chemicals and waste” (FPF reported).
The Assembly is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) and serves as a platform for member states to discuss and shape global health policies. Composed of representatives from the 194 WHO member states, the Assembly meets annually to review and approve the WHO’s work, including setting priorities, adopting resolutions, and discussing key health issues. The resolution on chemicals, waste, and pollution on human health was jointly proposed by Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, the European Union, Mexico, Monaco, Peru, Switzerland, and Uruguay.
The Assembly additionally recognized in the resolution “that robust data is only available for a small number of potential chemical exposures, and that people are exposed to many more chemicals in their daily lives.” Research in June 2023 by Muir et al. reviewed 50 years of published scientific literature, finding that the majority of chemicals known to be used by industry have not been the target of any environmental studies. The authors confirmed “significant bias toward repeated measurements of the same substances due to regulatory needs and the challenges of determining new, previously unmeasured, compounds.”
References
World Health Assembly (May 24, 2023). “The impact of chemicals, waste and pollution on human health.” World Health Organization (pdf).
Muir, D. et al. (2023). “How many chemicals in commerce have been analyzed in environmental media? A 50 year bibliometric analysis.” Environmental Science & Technology. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.2c09353
