Name your poison - you'll find it's legal. ONLY one in every 100 of the 50,000 industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals available for use in today has ever been tested for its potential danger to people's health and the environment.
The other 99 per cent, introduced before 1990, have never had to pass the modern tests of any regulatory authority to assess what risks people are taking by continuing to use them, according to a network of high-powered state bureaucrats reporting to a council of all the nation's environment ministers.
But a Herald investigation has found that, after the pesticides regulator stopped arsenic-laced timber being used for new play equipment, older wooden school play structures in NSW have not been dismantled. Flea powders and tomato dusts, cancelled because they could be unsafe, remain on sale without warnings.
"New" chemicals which came on the market after 1990 have been more rigorously evaluated. But since identifying 600 possible chemicals of concern 12 years ago,
The other watchdog, NicNas - the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme - has managed to assess 183 of 38,000 industrial chemicals estimated to have existed when it was set up 17 years ago. Of those made a priority, it finished just 32 reviews of 72 older chemicals.
"Some of these chemicals are now regarded as high risk around the world," said a frank discussion paper by the National Chemicals Working Group last year. "
Cancelled products containing the insecticide carbaryl, used to destroy pests in gardens and on pets, can still be bought, with no warnings about new findings by the pesticides authority about their human health risks.
