EU environment chief takes toxic test

Brussels

A blood test on European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom for man-made compounds commonly found in televisions, carpets, furniture and food highlighted the presence of DDT, a pesticide the EU banned from farms in 1983 after it was found to harm wildlife and attack the nervous system.

“In just a couple of generations we have accumulated thousands of chemicals that were not there in our grandfathers’ and grandmothers’ bodies,” Ms Wallstrom saidtold a news conference.

She helped launch The proposed chemicals safety law would mean last week, which would mean that tens of thousands of chemicals developed before 1981 would be re-evaluated for safety.