SEVEN YEARS OF
NEGOTIATION, LOBBYING, VOTING and painstaking committee work came to an
end on December 18th when the Council of Environment Ministers gave
their final approval to the text of the new law on ‘Registration,
Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals’ (REACH). Following 172
amendments passed at the European Parliament’s Environment Committee
(see
issue 36)
the Council held six
‘trialogue’ meetings with the
Parliament and the Commission to try to reduce the difference between
them. With one week to go before the deadline for further amendments a
compromise was arrived at.
Generally this is thought to have swung the pendulum slightly towards
the employer’s ‘light touch’ side of the debate. Certainly Green groups
were outraged by the transfer of ‘hormone disrupting’ chemicals from
mandatory substitution to the ‘substitution plan’ and ‘adequate
control’ category. ‘The deal will allow many chemicals ... that cause
cancer, birth defects and other serious illnesses, to stay on the
market and be used in consumer products even when safer alternatives
are available’ according to World Wildlife Fund campaigner Justin
Wilkes. Unions agreed but were also concerned about the change that
allows companies not to produce chemical safety reports on 20,000
substances which are produced in quantities of between 1 and 10 tonnes
per year. The ETUC said that workers would now not have access to
information vital to their safety. Employers’ groups specifically
welcomed this amendment but still thought that the substitution
provisions were too tough. A UNICE statement opined, ‘Industry is faced
with additional and strengthened requirements in many areas in the
Trialogue compromise, which will further challenge European’s
industry’s ability to implement REACH’.
The new law takes the form of a regulation and not a directive which
means it takes direct effect and does not have to be transposed into
national law by the now 27 Member States. This means that it should
start to make a difference as early as June when the new European
Chemicals Agency will become operational.
Sweden shuts H & S research institute with much still to do
THE SWEDISH ‘NATIONAL
INSTITUTE FOR WORKING LIFE’ has long been recognised as a world-class
centre for research in both health and safety and other work-related
fields. It has collaborated with the three Swedish trade union
confederations to organise seminars and conferences and publish
reports. All this activity is likely to come to an end in July when the
organisation has been ordered to shut down by the newly-elected
right-wing government. According to them this is part of general
spending cuts but the health and safety arm of the European Trade Union
Confederation, HESA, believes that ‘The reason behind this bolt from
the blue is opposition among a large section of Swedish employers to
independent research being done into working conditions’. The ‘new
government which took up office at the start of October has decided to
smash the thermometer rather than diagnose the sickness’. Dr.
Steve French from the Centre for Industrial Relations, at Keele
University was also unimpressed ‘I am well aware of the expertise
housed within the Institute and the decision to close the institute
appears to be an unwise and regressive step’.
It appears that there is still plenty of work for the Institute to do,
a recent survey found that nearly a quarter of Swedish workers had had
a health problem caused by work in the preceding twelve months. Stress
and mental strain were the commonest reasons given with strenuous work
postures and heavy manual work the next most prevalent. Only 17% of
workers who admitted to a health problem to the survey reported it as
such to their employer.
Mousework
linked to hand-arm symptoms
A REVIEW OF MEDICAL
LITERATURE has concluded that computer users are at greater risk of
hand and arm conditions from habitual use of the mouse than from
general computer work. The survey found moderate evidence that adverse
health effects were linked in a ‘dose-response’ relationship so that
the more intensive the mouse use the greater the likelihood of symptoms
developing. The article, published on the British Medical Journal web
site, recommends that researchers differentiate more between total
computer use, mouse use and keyboard use so that precise data on the
disabilities caused by these activities can be teased out. There was a
weaker relationship between mousework and neck and shoulder symptoms.
