In a letter to the Environment and Health and Food Safety Commissioners,[1] the EEB, CIEL<\/a> and HEAL<\/a> rejected recent claims from industry lobby groups that the EU\u2019s industrial standards should not cover human health protections.[2]<\/p>\n They also call for explicit references to \u201cpreventive measures\u201d to be retained in a standard text that will influence environmental performance guidelines for decades to come.<\/p>\n The EEB is Europe\u2019s largest network of environmental citizens\u2019 organisations with 140 members in more than 30 countries.<\/em><\/p>\n Commenting on the letter, EEB Industrial Production Manager Christian Schaible<\/strong> said:<\/p>\n “The resistance of industry lobby groups like CEFIC, CEWEP and EUROFER to have human health protection duly considered within these essential protections is deeply irresponsible. People in Europe expect EU industrial standards to be the best in the world, that means that all the features of the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme needs to be implemented and explicit references to preventive action must be included”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the letter, EEB Secretary General Jeremy Wates<\/strong> writes:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unreasonable and disingenuous to argue that protection of human health falls outside of the scope of the Industrial Emissions Directive, the text of which is peppered throughout with references to human health.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The letter warns of recent industry attempt to restrict the scope of the Industrial Emissions Directive (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Recast), the EU\u2019s main instrument for regulating pollution from industrial activities. The Directive sets binding standards for major industry in technical documents called \u2018BREFs\u2019.<\/p>\n The letter concludes:<\/p>\n \u201cWe strongly condemn claims that human health concerns fall outside of the scope of the BREFs and efforts to delete references to \u201cpreventive measures\u201d, and call on the European Commission to ensure that references to human health aspects and to \u201cpreventive measures\u201d are retained in the Environmental Management System standard text.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2018BREFs\u2019 refers to the \u2018Best Available Technique reference documents\u2019, which are produced for various industries by the European Commission following a consultation exercise known as the \u2018Sevilla Process\u2019.<\/p>\n The European Commission has recently proposed a new standard text to be used when rules are revised. While a reference to \u201chuman health\u201d was included in this text, environmental groups are concerned that \u201cpreventive measures\u201d has been removed despite having been explicitly mentioned in all previous BREFs.<\/p>\n The letter explains:<\/p>\n \u201cPreventive measures\u201d are taken to prevent pollution at source before any harm can be caused, \u201cprevention\u201d is the part of the core aim of the [Industrial Emissions Directive] and \u201cpreventive measures\u201d are included in the Directive as the first general principle governing the basic obligations of plant operators<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The EEB is a recognised member of the Industrial Emissions Directive Article 13 Forum, which provides oversight and guidance to the Commission and has called for all the features of the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) to be implemented.[3]<\/p>\n The letter was also supported by two partner organisations the Center for International Environmental Law<\/a> (CIEL) and the Health and Environment Alliance<\/a> (HEAL).<\/p>\n [wpfd_single_file id=”90926″ catid =”61″ name =”Letter: Human health and preventive action in BREFs”]<\/p>\n Notes:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n [1] See the letter: \u2018Human health and preventive action in BREFs<\/a>\u2019, 29 March 2018.<\/p>\n [2] Chemical industry says attempts to clean up toxic textiles is \u201cabuse\u201d of industry regulations<\/a>, META, 15 March 2018.<\/p>\n [3]\u00a0Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are designed to encourage operators to optimize production processes in terms of environmental or wider sustainability performance. The EU established the Community\u2019s Eco-management and audit scheme (EMAS system), which sets out the core elements on what this entails. Typically this includes sustainability and environmental performance criteria, provisions on its implementation and transparency for reporting. See:\u00a0http:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/environment\/emas\/index_en.htm<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leading health and environmental groups have strongly condemned industry claims that human health concerns fall outside of the scope of EU\u2018s industrial pollution legislation. In a [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,132,128,3,4],"tags":[191,93,52,176,325],"class_list":["post-90927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chemicals","category-industrial-emissions","category-industry-health","category-news","category-press-release","tag-air-pollution","tag-air-quality","tag-chemicals","tag-health","tag-pollution"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Industrial-Emissions-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eeb.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}