The “EU chemicals strategy for sustainability” questions regulatory toxicology as we know it: is it all rooted in sound scientific evidence?

Over the past decades, there has been an unprecedented regulatory drive in public health protection in the European Union, making large-scale toxicological incidents or mass poisonings such as, e.g. the thalidomide disaster of the 1950s–60s or the Seveso incident in 1976 an issue of the past. Although this is rarely perceived by the media and the general public, the implementation of a complex and interdependent network of regulations for chemical substances, including industrial chemicals, plant protection products, biocides, or chemicals in food and feed has minimised toxicological risks and has continuously increased public health and wellbeing in the EU. Moreover, although this framework already provides one of the most advanced regulatory systems worldwide, it is constantly pressed for improvement by scientific progress as well as an ever-increasing public awareness. From the perspective of a governmental authority in charge of consumer protection, this continuous evolutionary process is in fact key for safeguarding that consumers are protected according to state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and that the respective regulatory processes are optimised with respect to both their efficiency and effectiveness.