Non-food legislation – October 2021

Pharmaceutical developments
The EC has opened a public consultation on the revision of the pharmaceutical legislation. This was announced in the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe.
The US FDA has published draft guidance entitled “Select Updates for Unique Device Identification: Policy Regarding Global Unique Device Identification Database Requirements for Certain Devices; Draft Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff.” The comment period ends 13 December 2021.
In order to supply the prescribed quantity of medicine, pharmacists break open the packaging. Research by the Dutch Foundation for Pharmaceutical Statistics (in Dutch) shows that this happens in 20% of the cases in the Netherlands.

Hazardous substances – rules and regulations
EU: On 6 October, ECHA organised the Safer Chemicals Conference 2021. The materials and recordings are available here.
Australia: The government has published its roadmap for evaluating industrial chemicals.
Chile: The government has published (in Spanish) the official list (in Spanish, 3.81 MB) of substance for GHS classifications.
Denmark: On 5 October 2021, the government published three Executive Orders in relation to POPs. More information can be found in a recent SGS article.
NL: On 7 October 2021, the two-minute debate (in Dutch) on reducing exposure to PFAS was held and on 12 October the voting (in Dutch) on the motions tabled took place.
US: The EPA has released an update on its progress in testing pesticide products and containers for PFAS.

Infants have more microplastics in their faeces than adults
ACS reports that a New York University School of Medicine study has found that infants have more microplastics in their faeces than adults. An article (abstract) about the research is published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
The Green Science Policy Institute has launched the PFAS Data Hub, currently containing links to over 75 databases organised into 14 categories.
FPF reports that in an article (abstract) published in Environmental Science and Technology, University of Pittsburgh researchers outline six urgent questions relevant to science, technology and policy that must be tackled to address the PFAS problem.

More research
FPF reports on a viewpoint article (2.16 MB) published in Environmental Science and Technology, in which researchers from Eawag and ETH Zürich discuss ‘chemical simplification’ as a means to systematically tackle pollution by synthetic chemicals.
FPF reports on four recent scientific articles on phthalate exposure sources and impacts.
 

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