People exposed to 100,000 chemicals in homes

OUR daily expoure to a cocktail of more than 100,000 chemicals must be investigated by the EU to find out their long-term effects, a consumer watchdog urged.

The European Consumers’ Organisation (BEUC) says no one knows how these chemicals react together or what long-term effect they have on people or the environment.

While the European Commission has published a set of proposals called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), where manufacturers or importers of more than one tonne of a chemical substance per year must register it in a central database, there are no plans to look at the backlog of chemicals that have been used for years in many household goods.