Earlier this year, BC Law Professor David Wirth co-penned a monumental paper entitled “Manufactured Chemicals and Children’s Health—The Need for New Law,” published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Wirth, a trained chemist and environmental law expert, worked with an international, multidisciplinary team of scholars (among them Boston College’s Philip Landrigan, Thomas Chiles, and Kurt Straif) to blaze a new path toward a safer, healthier future for the children of the world.
Wirth and company have sought to harmonize the vast—and vastly differing—web of environmental laws and regulatory schema governing the use of toxic chemicals worldwide. The Toxic Substances Control Act, the US’s principal law regulating these substances, places the onus for implementation on the strained Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and federal courts. The EU takes what is in principle a more rigorous approach, but their regulations are ungainly and slow to react as new chemicals come to market. Wirth’s paper highlights the shortcomings of both systems and, perhaps more significantly, the lack of coordination between the two.
Some of the following data highlight the specter of toxic chemicals, an international environmental issue which knows no border. Global problems require global solutions and thoughtful people like Professor Wirth and his co-authors to help solve them. (View related article in this issue here.)
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Sources: Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health, “Manufactured Chemicals and Children’s Health—The Need for New Law,” the New England Journal of Medicine, (1/8/25). The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, Annals of Global Health (Vol. 89). EPA, Search for Superfund Sites Where You Live. Mass.gov: Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA) Program. Library of Congress, Environmental Law: A Beginner’s Guide.