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Article

5 Sep 2012

Author:
Alister Doyle. Reuters

Rising chemicals output a hazard, clean-up needed by 2020 -UN

Increasing misuse of chemicals is causing health and environmental damage especially in emerging economies and governments must do more to carry out a promised clean-up by 2020, a United Nations report said on Wednesday. Production and use of chemicals - from plastics to pesticides - is shifting to developing nations where safeguards are often weaker, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said...Poisonings from industrial and agricultural chemicals are among the top five leading causes of death worldwide, contributing to more than a million deaths every year, UNEP said...The gains that chemicals can provide must not come at the expense of human health and the environment," Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said...Scientists have only assessed the risks of using a fraction of an estimated 140,000 chemicals marketed worldwide, in everything from plastics to pesticides, UNEP said... UNEP...listed firms such as Bayer, Boots [part of Alliance Boots] or BASF as having ways to avoid damaging chemicals.

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