Chemophobia diverts attention from real threats, blaming victims rather than polluters. Current chemical regulations are inadequate, allowing harmful chemicals to persist in the environment. Strengthening these regulations through better-funded environmental science is crucial to protect public health and prevent millions of deaths linked to chemical pollution each year.
by 0 
Did you know, there are more than nine million deaths linked to chemical pollution each year? But that’s not all. This number is conservative because we don’t know anything about hundreds of thousand of chemicals that we come into contact with in our lifetime. That’s scary, right?
When some people hear such news, their immediate reaction is to avoid any form of chemicals. They runaway from pesticides, medicine, hand lotions, food additives, and anything that has a long unfamiliar name. It is not surprising that more than 40% of Europeans would rather live in a world where chemicals did not exist.
Yes, they want to live in world that has no oxygen, water, or proteins. Others are more moderate, they said they want a world that has no synthetic chemicals. This is why we now have the natural chemicals craze. And these folks prefer natural salt and not synthetic salt. Unfortunately, you can’t choose one over the other, they are both sodium chloride.
The problem with chemophobia is it takes away responsibility of chemical pollution from the polluters and places it on the victims.
What saddens me about this fear of chemicals, particularly synthetic chemicals is it does little to protect us. It just shifts responsibility for reducing exposure to harmful chemicals from the polluter to innocent consumers. It fails to bring to account companies that are destroying the planet and killing people and wildlife.
Environmental science across the globe are painstakingly working to identify the chemicals that are harmful. They look at the prevalence of these chemicals in soil, in water, in air, and even in your food. But that’s not all, they investigate how these chemicals bring harm to humans, animals, and plants. Using this information they can tell us the risk posed by the chemical.
Many countries have regulations on how to produce, what to produce, where to store, how to transport, and how to throwaway chemicals or the products made from these chemicals. All these laws seek to protect human and wildlife health. Yet, the number of people suffering from diseases linked to chemical pollution continue to increase.
Why? Current environmental regulations are not adequate for adequately protecting us.
Did you know, some of the pesticides used in Africa were banned in Europe? But guess what? Those pesticides are still manufactured in Europe and sold to African countries. Does that mean the evidence they gathered against those pesticides is irrelevant to Africa? A pesticide that was shown to cause kidney diseases in Europe will definitely cause kidney diseases in Africa.
But that’s not all. Did you know that a company can add a chemical in its product and not tell the chemical structure of the compound to the regulator? Yes, companies can do that and claim it’s confidential business information. Numerous forever chemicals are in our bodies today because they were considered confidential business information.
Sometimes these companies knew the potential harm caused by these chemicals. You have probably heard about Big Tobacco and Big Oil. What you have probably not heard is about today’s hot topics, forever chemicals. In the 1990s, Kris Hansen, who worked for 3M which manufactured per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that is forever chemicals, found the chemicals in who never worked at the company.
Hansen reported this to her boss, the boss immediately took an early retirement. It turns out, the company conducted tests that proved the chemical were harmful two decades earlier and never informed the regulator. With the way environmental regulations are set up, 3M was under no obligation to report. Our environmental regulations, are the ones failing us!
There is a way to improve this. Better regulations that puts people and the environment ahead of profits. But here is the problem, better regulations are a result of better science, and better science demands better funding. If environmental science remains underfunded, millions and millions of people will die due to exposure to chemicals.
It is through environmental science research that we found links between mass fish die offs and tire wear products. It is through environmental science that we found the link between chemical pollution and respiratory diseases. It is through environmental science that we found the link between poor housing and cognitive development. It is only when we know the cause can we begin to effectively fight something.
