Public health must be a European Commission priority – Dalli

Maltese MEP Miriam Dalli today called on the European Commission to identify and ban potentially harmful ‘endocrine disruptor’ chemicals.

According to her statement, these chemicals can potentially affect human hormones, provoke the development of tumors and cause abnormal growth patterns in children. They can even affect human reproductive function in both men and women.

“The European Commission needs to act now and put public health before any other interest. These are chemicals which can be found in many everyday products from food, cleaning products, plastic containers and cosmetics”, Dalli said.

Her call follows a European Court decision taken last December whereby the European Commission was encouraged to identify and phase out endocrine disrupting substances.

“Together with socialist and democrats MEPs in the environment committee, we have time and time again insisted with the Commission to initiate the process for the removal of ‘endocrine disruptors’ from the market,” Dalli said, adding that it was unacceptable that  no real progress was registered more than two years after the original deadline of December 2013 was elapsed.

In a motion for resolution tabled by the socialists and democrats together with other political groups, and supported by the European Parliament, MEPs made it clear that the European Commission has to adopt hazard-based scientific criteria to determine endocrine-disrupting properties.