An international team of scientists has issued a stark warning that current toxicology and chemical regulatory regimes are failing to protect public health and the environment from a host of toxins found in pesticides and other petrochemical-based compounds. In an article published in November in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, 43 researchers from five continents, including leading experts in toxicology, biology, public health and environmental sciences, began by pointing out severe lapses in current regulatory systems for evaluating the safety of products derived from petrochemical byproducts. They note, for example, that the full commercial formulations of common petrochemical-based pesticides used in global agriculture have never been subjected to long-term tests on mammals. They also note that only the active ingredients declared by makers of pesticides and plasticizers (a type of chemical additive used to increase pliability) have been assessed for human health risks. In fact, the full ingredient lists for these commercial chemical compounds are often proprietary — not publicly disclosed by the companies that develop them. And yet, the article’s authors found that these pesticides and plasticizers contain petroleum-based waste and heavy metals such as arsenic that could make them “at least 1000 times more toxic at low environmentally relevant doses than the active ingredients alone under conditions of long-term exposure.” As a result of these regulatory failings, “We are facing a silent epidemic of chemical pollution,” said article co-author Angelika Hilbeck, a biologist at ETH Zürich. “Chronic diseases are surging, biodiversity is collapsing, and public trust in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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