Large chemicals firms representing private business interests have led a concerted push to undermine and destroy EU attempts to protect the public from hazardous chemicals, a Greenpeace report released today has revealed.

The report, ‘Toxic Lobby: How the chemicals industry is trying to kill REACH’, describes how, in an attempt to cripple the proposed reform of EU chemicals law (REACH), the chemicals industry has scared and misled decision-makers by denying the problems of chemical contamination, creating fear over job losses and economic costs, obstructing innovation, and co-opting small and medium enterprises to their disadvantage.

A day after the European Commission launched a new initiative to control excessive lobby influence in Brussels, the Greenpeace report documents the prominent role of the German government and German chemicals giant BASF in leading the opposition to REACH in Brussels. BASF, which spearheaded an international campaign to mobilise the US and other non-EU governments to undermine REACH, admitted in 2005 that it had 235 politicians under contract in Germany alone.

"Lack of accountability and transparency in Brussels decision-making comes at the cost of public interest legislation," said Jorgo Riss, director of Greenpeace European Unit. "The chemicals industry’s corrosive campaign to destroy REACH thus far has depended on the willingness of key officials to abandon their role as public servants and behave like industry lobbyists."

The report compares the projected costs of REACH (0.2 billion euro per year) with chemicals industry annual sales (586 billion euro, or 2,790 times as much as REACH would cost). It exposes the hypocrisy of the chemicals lobby: while the industry was arguing in Brussels that it could not afford safety regulations on cost grounds, BASF sales rose 14% to 47.2 billion euro, and its net income rose 50% to 3 billion euro.

Nadia Haiama, Greenpeace EU policy director on chemicals, said: "The drip-drip influence of the chemicals lobby has led to a wholesale dilution of what started out as a promising effort to improve human health. Unless this toxic influence is reversed, REACH will allow the continued use of hazardous chemicals that can cause cancer and reproductive illnesses, even where safer alternatives are available."

Read and download: Toxic Lobby: How the chemicals industry is trying to kill REACH 

See also the reports:

• Fatal Flaws - Effect thresholds and "adequate control" of risks: the fatal flaws in the Council position on Authorisation within REACH
• Fragile – Our reproductive health and chemical exposure: a review of the evidence for links between declines in human reproductive health and our exposure to hazardous chemicals