Press note: HEAL together, with the other EDC-Free Europe coalition campaign partners, are calling on the European Commission to urgently propose the non-renewal of two harmful pesticides—fenoxaprop-P-ethyl and fludioxonil.
This Wednesday, EU Commission President von der Leyen is set to unveil a Clean Industrial Deal, a “roadmap to strengthen competitiveness and decarbonisation of the EU’s industry”.
Against the backdrop of an ever-growing body of evidence on the health impacts and cost of people’s exposure to pollution, HEAL is concerned that the CID misses the opportunity to set the EU on the path for swift and significant pollution reduction and disease prevention.
People’s health is threatened like never before from the triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The health impacts from the triple crisis not only lead to immense suffering for individuals and their communities, but also to significant health, economic and societal costs:
- Air pollution is the top environmental threat to health in the EU, leading to hundreds of billions of EUR in health cost annually – and emissions are not decreasing fast enough to meet 2030 emission reduction obligations.
- Exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals results in up to 163 billion EUR in health cost annually.
- Exposure to PFAS, the forever chemicals, is estimated to cost up to 84 billion EUR annually, which is likely an underestimate.
- Between 1980 and 2023, the overall economic cost for climate-related extreme events (floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts) amounted to an estimated EUR 738 billion in the EU. 6% of the most extreme events were responsible for 89% of the economic losses. In the summer of 2023, more than 47,000 people lost their lives due to heat exposure in Europe.
While there is some recognition of the need for measures to further decarbonise and protect biodiversity, action to reduce and prevent pollution currently seems to have dropped from EU policy-makers agendas.
To work for people in the EU and their health, the Clean Industrial Deal needs to be a zero pollution deal, with three principles at its core:
- Prevent pollution
- End financing and subsidies for pollution
- Clean up pollution
The best cost-benefit approach to reduce pollution for better health is to strengthen pollution prevention and control measures in key EU laws including REACH, NECD, as well as phasing out PFAS and the burning of fossil fuels swiftly.
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