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How are decisions coordinated across sectors in the EU political system? Frequently, more cross-sectoral coordination is seen as increasing the number of veto players, thus increasing the likelihood of blockages and lowest common denominator solutions. It is for this reason that historically low cross-sectoral coordination in the EU political system is often believed to facilitate decisions. This chapter explores actual coordination processes in the European Commission and Council and finds that, over time, the organization of cross-sectoral coordination has increased. Combining procedural knowledge with case study insight on legal acts such as the Liberalization of Services Directive or the REACH Directive, it challenges the view that these developments necessarily lead to a joint-decision trap. When used strategically, cross-policy coordination can also yield exit, because it allows certain actors to influence who becomes a veto-player and/or to move a decision horizontally or vertically into an arena favourable to the desired outcome.

This chapter looks at American and European policies toward the risks of chemicals and hazardous substances. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) significantly strengthened American chemical regulations and contributed to the 1979 decision of the EU to both harmonize and strengthen its chemical regulations, though they remained weaker than those of the United States. While there has been no major statutory change in American chemical regulation since then, in 2006 the EU approved REACH—the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals, which made European chemical regulations significantly more stringent and comprehensive than those of the United States. Meanwhile, risk assessments by the U.S. federal government do not consider the hazardous substances in electronics deposited in landfills as a threat to public health.

This chapter discusses the innovative interventions of a new multisite family caregiver intervention research program entitled Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH). It describes five types of caregiver interventions—individual information and support, group support and family systems, psychoeducational and skill-based, home-based environmental, and enhanced technology systems—that are being testing by the REACH program. A major strength of the REACH project is its use of the same standardized instruments across treatment sites to measure the effects of these interventions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of REACH efforts to tailor its interventions to meet the needs of different populations of family caregivers, and presents recommendations for future studies in caregiver intervention research and service delivery.

The premise of entangled mercantilism is that governments act to promote the competitive position of multinationals, but do these multinationals actually prefer stricter regulation? Chapter four, “Regulatory Preferences in the Chemical Industry” examines the interplay of governments and firms in the development of comprehensive European chemical regulations. The chapter traces the role of firms through the initial development of REACH, the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals regulations in Europe. The chapter shows that the largest American chemical firms became important supporters of the regulation and encouraged the adoption of a fee structure which would raise, rather than lower, fixed costs.

While U.S. federal chemical policy development largely ceased after 1980, major developments occurred in other countries and internationally. In 2006 the European Union significantly overhauled the chemical policies of its twenty-six member counties. This new regulation required registration and full chemical information dossiers on all 143,000 chemicals manufactured and used in Europe and government authorization of those chemicals of very high concern. Since then, several Asian countries have passed new laws to harmonize with the new European standards. Meanwhile, several new treaties have been negotiated by the United Nations to manage chemicals in global chemical markets.

The first part of chapter 6 examines the Brussels Effect through the global impact of the EU’s food safety regulation, while the second part of the chapter examines the Brussels Effect through the lens of chemical safety. The discussion first introduces the EU’s key food safety regulations, and examines the underlying interest group dynamics that explain the emergence of such stringent regulations from the EU’s legislative process. It then offers some examples of both the de facto and de jure Brussels Effect on food safety. Next, the chapter turns to chemical safety, again reviewing the relevant regulation, together with the politics behind that regulation. It then illustrates the pervasiveness of the Brussels Effect—both de facto and de jure—demonstrating the EU’s entrenched regulatory influence across the global marketplace.

This chapter focuses on the external dimension of the European Union’s (EU) chemicals legislation REACH. Although this law does not create a classic experimentalist architecture, it incorporates a number of core experimentalist elements. The REACH Regulation centralizes chemicals regulation at the EU level but involves in its processes a variety of state and non-state actors from different levels of governance within and beyond EU borders. It reaches beyond European borders in three different ways. First, the internal EU processes are extended to non-EU actors. Second, the data concerning the intrinsic properties of chemical substances and possible safer alternatives generated through REACH procedures can be used by non-EU regulators in their own domestic policies. Third, the REACH Regulation constitutes a model of advanced and comprehensive chemicals regulation that can exert external effects on non-EU policy-making processes.

This chapter presents an overview of the risk assessment process with an in-depth description of the related terminology. Critical study features that should be included to maximize utility of data for risk assessment for any experimental study are presented as an aid for academic scientists interested in designing studies with utility in the risk assessment process. The second half of this chapter summarizes the current state of regulatory policy regarding EDCs in the United States and abroad. Topics addressed include the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and a detailed accounting of the changes enacted by the recent 2016 revisions to TSCA. These policies are compared to the Registration Evaluation Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) laws that govern chemical safety assessment in the European Union. The Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) and current efforts toward developing high-throughput methods for screening chemicals for endocrine-disrupting activity are also summarized.

This chapter looks into the regulation of chemical substances in the EU. From its inception in the 1960s, EU chemical legislation has evolved over time, culminating in the adoption of REACH and the establishment of a European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). REACH is an extensive piece of legislation aiming to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment as well as the free circulation of substances on the internal market while enhancing competitiveness and innovation. The chapter also looks into regulations relating to the classification, packaging, and labelling of dangerous substances. In addition, the chapter considers other legal acts pertaining to the use of pesticides, the export and import of dangerous chemicals, the restrictions on certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), the banning of exports of metallic mercury, and the regulation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

Infectious diseases in the United States have declined while noninfectious diseases due to environmental factors or gene-environment interactions are increasing. Many noninfectious diseases, recently characterized as the “developmental origins of disease”—such as lead poisoning, childhood cancer, and neurological disorders—result from in utero or early-childhood exposures to toxicants. Postmarket laws cannot prevent these diseases in developing children. Several kinds of injustices can arise from childhood exposures to toxic substances—minor to major harms, along with the undermining of fair equality of opportunity and causing battery. Thus, postmarket laws are unjust to children and adults alike. To better protect the public’s health, Congress should enact premarket-toxicity-testing laws, somewhat resembling those for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and the European Community’s REACH legislation. Such legislation, utilizing science before the public is exposed, would be much more just than current postmarket laws that use science to determine risks long after exposures occur.