‘Fast-track’ regulation could expose Britons to harmful chemicals, say campaigners

Exclusive: Fighting Dirty taking legal action against government over proposal it says could import weaker standards

An environmental campaign group is taking legal action against the government over proposals that it claims could fast-track chemical hazard classifications from other countries with lower standards into UK law.

Fighting Dirty claims proposals to change the classification and labelling of potentially hazardous chemicals could result in the UK weakening standards on cancer-causing substances.

Last year, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which since Brexit has been responsible for the regulation of chemicals in Britain, launched a consultation on plans to change the system, which determines the substances that are identified as hazardous, the warnings that appear on labels, what restrictions apply and whether chemicals are banned or tightly controlled.

Its consultation proposed that the HSE should be allowed to fast-track chemical hazard classifications from other countries into British law. When the HSE published its response to the consultation findings, it said it would recognise the EU’s standards when adopting such hazard classifications. The EU has the highest standards on chemical safety globally.

But when the government laid the regulations before parliament earlier this year, the EU and its standards were not mentioned. Fighting Dirty is taking legal action against the government over concerns that this omission may expose the public to more hazardous chemicals.

Ricardo Gama, a partner at the law firm Leigh Day, which is representing Fighting Dirty in the proceedings, said the absence of this “safeguard” meant the government, or any future government, “could approve chemicals from places that have lower standards than the UK and EU”.

Fighting Dirty has said substances classified as human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, such as hexavalent chromium – the highly toxic chemical made infamous through the film Erin Brockovich and the water pollution scandal – are far more widely used in countries such as the US, China, India and Brazil than in the EU.