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	Ocean issues are human rights issues, says UN expert by Astrid Puentes Riano Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment   Mar. 2025   Ocean degradation threatens communities and affects human rights worldwide, including the right to a healthy environment, a UN independent expert said today.   “The protection of marine ecosystems is part of States’ obligations to protect human rights,” said Astrid Puentes Riaño, Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.   In her report to the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur stressed that the degradation of the ocean threatens humanity and exacerbates inequalities and disproportionately affects marginalised populations.   “Knowing the interdependence and interconnectedness of humans and ecosystems with the ocean is essential to understanding the current impacts on this delicate balance, even for those living inland,” Puentes Riano said. She noted that these linkages include food systems, healthy ecosystems, a safe climate and the work of ocean defenders.   “The ocean is the largest biome on Earth, covering 70 per cent of its surface. One third of the human population (2.4 billion people) live within 100 km of an ocean coast,” she said.   “Despite over 600 agreements, marine ecosystems face pressing threats including climate change, overfishing, extractivism, pollution, and deep-sea mining,” the expert said. Weak governance and enforcement gaps; disproportionate impacts on Indigenous Peoples, small-scale fishers, and coastal communities; escalating violence against ocean defenders, and insufficient accountability exacerbate these issues.   Puentes Riano called for a holistic, comprehensive, integrated and gender-responsive human rights and ecosystem-based approach to ocean governance. She said the inclusion of ancestral knowledge, the rights of present and future generations, and a long-term vision were crucial to solving the current triple planetary crises and addressing ocean challenges.   “We must mainstream the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment into ocean policies, strengthen international cooperation, and ensure that those most affected lead conservation efforts,” the Special Rapporteur said.   In her report, the expert outlined key recommendations for States, businesses and international organisations, including: strengthening legal protections for marine biodiversity and coastal communities; implementing stricter regulations on overfishing, pollution and offshore extractive industries; enforcing the precautionary principle, all while recognising the role of ocean defenders and indigenous knowledge in marine governance. The report also recommends for States to support developing countries in marine conservation.   “Without immediate action, we risk losing marine biodiversity, which in turn will impact the lives and human rights of millions of people who depend on the ocean,” Puentes Riano said. “We need a clear understanding that ocean issues are human rights issues, and we need to apply this to all ocean-related efforts.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/ocean-issues-are-human-rights-issues-says-un-expert http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5543-business-planetary-boundaries-and-right-clean-healthy-and http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-environment Visit the related web page
	Chemical pollution is all-pervasive on our planet by Down to Earth, OHCHR, NEJM, agencies   27 Feb. 2025   No place is safe from chemical pollution in today’s world, says State of India’s Environment 2025. (Centre for Science & Environment)   Chemical pollution is all-pervasive on our planet, with no place on Earth remaining safe from it, according to the State of India’s Environment 2025 released at the Anil Agarwal Dialogue on February 26, 2025.   “In the Anthropocene age, human-made chemicals are not only “forever”, but have also become “everywhere” pollutants. From high in the atmosphere to deep inside oceans, from soils and trees to uninhabited regions — they are everywhere,” stated the report, released by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) director general Sunita Narain, India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant; former deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia; and management and financial guru Raj Liberhan.   Down To Earth correspondent Rohini Krishnamurthy, who anchored a special session on ‘chemicals in the environment’ at the Dialogue on February 26, said: “In 2019, chemicals in the environment reportedly accounted for two million deaths worldwide. New chemicals are often released into the market before we have fully understood their impacts. As a result, there are gaps in our understanding of the scale and threat of the risks posed by them in our environment.”   According to the World Health Organization, some 160 million chemicals are known to humans. Data from the Chemicals Abstracts Service, a global inventory of these substances, indicates that countries across the world are making, using and importing some 60,000 chemicals that are not well understood and regulated.   The State of India’s Environment 2025 report says humans have “synthesised some 140,000 chemicals and mixtures of chemicals”. These are chemicals that did not exist till a few decades ago. New chemicals are being invented and developed at an unprecedented rate. As per 2019 data, the US produces an average of 1,500 new substances a year.   Said Krishnamurthy: “Naturally, the rate at which chemicals are released into the environment is also very high. Annually, some 220 billion tonne of chemicals are released. In fact, humans are responsible for pumping in 65 kg of cancer-causing chemicals every second into the atmosphere.”   Speaking at the Dialogue, Donthi N Reddy, visiting senior fellow, Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, said: “We are indiscriminately using pesticides in our rural regions — 255,000 tonne every year — when even a single gramme is lethal.”   The disease burden   “Once they get into our bodies, synthetic chemicals first encounter the lungs, skin and gut. They can also travel through the bloodstream to affect other organs like the kidneys or the immune system. They can enter individual cells and affect how instructions in the DNA are converted into protein. Long terms exposure to chemicals leads to a range of health issues such as cancer, organ damage, weakening of the immune system, development of allergies or asthma etc,” Krishnamurthy said.   The State of India’s Environment report asks if the world has reached a critical situation in terms of chemical pollution — aside from it accounting for two million deaths (2019, WHO), 53 million disability-adjusted life years have also been lost due to exposures to certain chemicals.   * The Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2025, an annual conclave of journalists from India who write on environment and development issues.   http://www.downtoearth.org.in/pollution/aad-2025-no-place-is-safe-from-chemical-pollution-in-todays-world-says-state-of-indias-environment-2025   Jan. 2025   Multiple diseases in children have been linked to manufactured synthetic chemicals - Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health   Children are suffering and dying from diseases that scientific research has linked to chemical exposures, findings that require urgent revamping of laws around the world, according to a new paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).   Authored by more than 20 leading public health researchers, including one from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and another from the United Nations, the paper lays out “a large body of evidence” linking multiple childhood diseases to synthetic chemicals and recommends a series of aggressive actions to try to better protect children.   The paper is a “call to arms” to forge an “actual commitment to the health of our children”, said Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a co-author of the paper.   In conjunction with the release of the paper, some of the study authors are helping launch an Institute for Preventive Health to support the recommendations outlined in the paper and to help fund implementation of reforms.   The paper points to data showing global inventories of roughly 350,000 synthetic chemicals, chemical mixtures and plastics, most of which are derived from fossil fuels. Production has expanded 50-fold since 1950, and is currently increasing by about 3% a year – projected to triple by 2050, the paper states.   Meanwhile, noncommunicable diseases, including many that research shows can be caused by synthetic chemicals, are rising in children and have become the principal cause of death and illness for children, the authors write.   Despite the connections, which the authors say “continue to be discovered with distressing frequency”, there are very few restrictions on such chemicals and no post-market surveillance for longer-term adverse health effects.   “The evidence is so overwhelming and the effects of manufactured chemicals are so disruptive for children, that inaction is no longer an option,” said Daniele Mandrioli, a co-author of the paper and director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy. “Our article highlights the necessity for a paradigm shift in chemical testing and regulations to safeguard children’s health.”   Such a shift would require changes in laws, restructuring of the chemical industry and redirection of financial investments similar to what has been undertaken with efforts to transition to clean energy, the paper states.   The paper identifies several disturbing data points for trend lines over the last 50 years. They include incidence of childhood cancers up 35%, male reproductive birth defects have doubled in frequency and neurodevelopmental disorders are affecting one child in six. Autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed in one in 36 children, pediatric asthma has tripled in prevalence and pediatric obesity prevalence has nearly quadrupled, driving a “sharp increase in Type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents”.   “Children’s health has been slipping away as a priority focus,” said Tracey Woodruff, a co-author of the paper and director of the University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) program on reproductive health and the environment. “We’ve slowly just been neglecting this. The clinical and public health community and the government has failed them.”   The authors cite research documenting how “even brief, low-level exposures to toxic chemicals during early vulnerable periods” in a child’s development can cause disease and disability. Prenatal exposures are particularly hazardous, the paper states.   “Diseases caused by toxic chemical exposures in childhood can lead to massive economic losses, including health care expenditures and productivity losses resulting from reduced cognitive function, physical disabilities, and premature death,” the paper notes. “The chemical industry largely externalizes these costs and imposes them on governments and taxpayers.”   The paper takes issue with the US Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1977 and amendments, arguing that even though the law was enacted to protect public health from “unreasonable risks” posed by chemicals, it does not provide the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the authorities needed to actually meet that commitment.   Instead, the manner in which the law is implemented assumes that all manufactured chemicals are harmless and beneficial and burdens government regulators with identifying and assessing the chemicals.   “Hazards that have been recognized have typically been ignored or downplayed, and the responsible chemicals allowed to remain in use with no or limited restrictions,” the paper states. “In the nearly 50 years since TSCA’s passage, only a handful of chemicals have been banned or restricted in US markets.”   Chemical oversight is more rigorous in the European Union, the paper says, but still fails to provide adequate protections, relying heavily on testing data provided by the chemical industry and providing multiple exemptions, the paper argues.   The authors of the paper prescribe a new global “precautionary” approach that would only allow chemical products on the market if their manufacturers could establish through independent testing that the chemicals are not toxic at anticipated exposure levels.   “The core of our recommendation is that chemicals should be tested before they come to market, they should not be presumed innocent only to be found to be harmful years and decades later,” said , a co-author who directs the program for global public health and the common good at Boston College. “Each and every chemical should be tested before they come to market.”   Additionally, companies would be required to conduct post-marketing surveillance to look for long-term adverse effects of their products.   That could include bio-monitoring of the most prevalent chemical exposures to the general population, Mandrioli said. Disease registries would play another fundamental role, he said, but those approaches should be integrated with toxicological studies that can “anticipate and rapidly predict effects that might have very long latencies in humans, such as cancer”. Clusters of populations with increased cancer incidences, particularly when they are children, should trigger immediate preventive actions, he said.   Key to it all would be a legally binding global chemicals treaty that would fall under the auspices of the United Nations and would require a “permanent, independent science policy body to provide expert guidance”, the paper suggests.   The paper recommends chemical companies and consumer product companies be required to disclose information about the potential risks of the chemicals in use and report on inventory and usage of chemicals of “high concern”.   “Pollution by synthetic chemicals and plastics is a major planetary challenge that is worsening rapidly,” the paper states. “Continued, unchecked increases in production of fossil-carbon–based chemicals endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s capacity for reproduction. Inaction on chemicals is no longer an option.”   http://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/08/health-experts-childrens-health-chemicals-paper http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2409092 http://toxicfreesolutions.org/international-experts-call-for-urgent-action-to-protect-childrens-health-from-harmful-chemicals/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/strengthen-regulation-hazardous-chemicals-stop-gender-related-health-harms http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5752-pollution-information-portals-strengthening-access-information http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/09/unsound-management-chemicals-and-wastes-fuelling-global-toxic-emergency-un http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-toxics-and-human-rights/about-toxics-and-human-rights http://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/11/submission-un-special-rapporteur-toxics-and-human-rights http://ceh.unicef.org/ceh-essentials/overview-risks   * UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Children have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. States are responsible not only for protecting children’s rights from immediate harm, but also for foreseeable violations of their rights in the future due to action, or inaction, today. States can be held accountable for environmental harm occurring both within their borders and beyond:   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/urgent-action-states-needed-tackle-climate-change-says-un-committee-guidance Visit the related web page
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