Stronger management of risky chemicals needed in industry

There is a clear need to increase the knowledge of the industrial sources of hazardous chemicals and to apply measures to reduce their use and emissions to the environment, said the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) in a press release on Friday, quoting a project report.

The project called HAZBREF funded by EU worked for more than 3 years to identify the hazardous chemicals used in industrial sectors, their use patterns, environmental characteristics, and possible ways to prevent and reduce their releases to the environment.

On the EU level the main instrument to control industrial releases is the Industrial Emissions Directive, which This is done particularly through the publication of Best Available Techniques Reference Documents (BREFs). However, in most cases hazardous substances have not been comprehensively addressed in BREFs.

“The current BREFs have been successful in reducing the emissions of many traditional hazardous substances, such as heavy metals and dioxins. Now we should move on to other hazardous substances, those chemicals, which are not yet adequately addressed in the BREFs,” said Kaj Forsius, the BREF Coordinator at the SYKE and the Project Manager of the HAZBREF.

The objective of the Industrial Emissions Directive is to achieve a high level of environmental protection.

“When the use and risks of chemicals are better addressed in BREF Documents, the operators can manage industrial chemicals better and the authorities can target relevant chemicals in permitting and supervising,” says Michael Suhr, the lead author of the report from the German Environment Agency UBA. “This will clearly contribute to the reduction of the use of hazardous substances in industrial installations and thereby diminish the emissions to the environment.”