Why be concerned about chemicals in the environment?

There are many challenges to our environment and health which we need to consider. These include floods, droughts, habitat destruction,

climate change causing ecological disruption, arrival of alien species and novel diseases.

So why should we pay any attention to chemicals in the environment?

Professor Andrew Johnson on behalf of the Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee".

The magnitude of the challenge • More than 80,000 chemicals are used and disposed of every day.

• Many will contaminate our soils, rivers, groundwater and coastal waters.

• Some accumulate in wildlife and humans producing adverse effects.

• We don’t understand the extent of the risks.

• The chemicals market is growing by about 2000 new compounds per year.

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100s’ of chemicals can be found in our fish & other wildlife today

CEH fish tissue archive for the UK

Polychlorinated biphenyls Popular as electrical insulators

Banned in 2001 but still commonly found in wildlife tissue

Chemical problems in the UK can arise unexpectedly -DDT

Unanticipated effect of egg shell thinning almost wiped out UK birds of prey

Has DDT now all gone away?

A very effective insecticide but…………..

Some UK fish remain highly contaminated with the historic pesticide DDT

Fish heavily contaminated at the River Lee at Wheathampstead

Young fish are severely contaminated living in proximity to a pesticide Factory which closed many decades ago at Wheathampstead on the River Lee

CEH fish tissue archive for the UK

The choices we make with chemicals can cast a long shadow!

Banned from use in the UK in 1984

Some chemical problems that hit home in the UK – TBT

Populations of shell fish were hit hard by this anti-fouling product It had endocrine disrupting effects – turning females into males!

A current worry is fish becoming infertile due to estrogen hormones excreted by humans

Changes in male fish testes leading to reduced fertility

National risk assessment Map for endocrine

disruption in fish

PredictedRisk Class

No risk

At risk

High risk

Being a densely populated small island, so exposure of fish to sewage effluent and the associated chemicals would be high for England. This is the predicted risk for endocrine disruption to fish

Williams, R.J., Keller, V.J.D., Johnson, A.C., Young, A.R., Holmes, M.G.R., Wells, C., Gross-Sorokin, M. Benstead, R. (2009). A national risk assessment for intersex in fish arising from steroid estrogens. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 28, 220-230.

Many sewage treatment plants can be found along our lowland rivers Predicting steroid estrogen concentrations along the Thames catchment

There are 300 large and small sewage treatment plants discharging into the non- Tidal Thames In summer in Reading, Berkshire the river can be 1/3 treated sewage effluent!

LONDON

Each dot is a large sewage treatment plant!

Why worry about chemicals in the UK environment in particular?

• Could we not rely on research from France or Germany to inform our approach to chemicals?

• We have many areas with a high density of population and historic narrow streets with persistent air pollution

• Many European countries now incinerate their sewage sludge. But we discharge a high proportion of our sludge to land for farmers.

This sludge can transfer many undesirable contaminants to our soils.

• We in the UK are particularly exposed to contaminants discharged to water through our sewage treatment plants…….Why is that?

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How much water do Europe’s countries have available to dilute their waste?

We have a significant proportion of very populous regions in areas of modest rainfall – low dilution, less than a factor of 10!

Keller V.D.J., Williams, R.J., Lofthouse, C., Johnson, A.C. (2014). Worldwide estimation of river concentrations of any chemical originating from sewage-treatment plants using dilution factors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 33, 447-452.

UK will be disproportionately affected by any EU legislation to control common down the drain chemicals Hard for us to meet the standards if we have so little dilution to help us

What costs are involved in the UK? • Approximate gross value of the chemicals industry in the UK £8.9

billion in 2014 (ONS)

• Approximate gross value of the pharma industry in the UK £6.0 billion in 2014 (ONS)

• Approximate cost of REACH chemicals testing/registration across Europe £845 million as of 2011

• Investment in protecting water from sewage discharge (for Thames Water £100 million on removing PO4, £800 million on reducing gross organics and £4.5 billion on reducing sewer overflows since 1993)

• Possible costs of further improving sewage treatment to eliminate pharmaceuticals and other trace contaminants across the UK - £27-31 billion over 20 years (which would double our water bills)

Current and future challenges we are grappling with…..

• Increasing use, diversity and volumes of chemicals used

• Increasingly diverse burden of chemical contaminants found in humans and wildlife

• Our particular geographic vulnerability

• Endocrine disrupting chemicals

• Neonicotinoid pesticides (and bees)

• Nanoparticles

• Microplastics

• Increased antibiotic resistance in natural environments

• Combination or mixture effects of chemicals acting together

• Something we haven’t thought of yet!!!

There are good news stories about chemicals where policy makers and scientists worked together to help the environment

• Banning of DDT and many other persistent of bioaccumulative pesticides led to the return of our birds of prey

• Reduction in emissions from coal power stations so less acid rain

• Banning of TBT led to the return of water snails, oysters

and improved overall estuarine biodiversity

• Elimination of highly bioaccumulative metal mercury

We want UK society to benefit from chemicals whilst maintaining and improving the integrity of the

natural environment.

This challenge will continue into the foreseeable future.

What is not in doubt is that the UK exposure to

down the drain chemicals will always be amongst the highest in Europe

Examples of how HSAC can help?

• Advise on chemicals research policy.

• Provide evidence-based guidance on how to better evaluate chemical toxicity.

• Advise on emerging chemical threats nationally and internationally.

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of chemical regulation and advise on improvements

• Offer a vision of the “chemical environment “ we want to achieve for the UK in the future.

We only have one of these!