Women and Chemicals

Why women?
linked to exposure to harmful chemicals. Many women around the
world have limited access to health care and health treatment. Often
they cannot finance medical treatment because of lack of money or
health insurance. In many countries there is no health insurance system
or a comparable social system for health treatment in place.
To avoid hazardous chemicals women have to use safe substitutes
and non-chemical alternatives. In order to do so, they
often have to make investments. This may mean for example
buying new safe products or removing lead-containing paint in
their homes or contaminated soil. Yet 75 per cent of the world’s
women cannot get bank loans because they have unpaid or insecure
jobs and are not entitled to property ownership. 31
Restricted access to natural resources limit women in the
production of traditional, non-chemical containing products.
Many natural resources are used in safe alternatives for products
like packaging materials, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals.
Forests, for example, provide raw materials for products like
baskets, fences, drying racks or packaging. In Nigeria women
use containers for marketing agricultural products which are
almost exclusively made of natural materials. 32 If forests disappear
because of climate change, food and soy production, a
whole range of non-chemical containing products disappear
and women have to use non-natural products like plastic
containers.
Scientific limitations
Many legislative decisions are based on scientific research. Besides
public opinion changes due to fatal events like accidents
and pressure from (influential) stakeholders, the main catalyst for
governments to apply stricter laws on chemical management is
scientific evidence. To achieve a high protection level for women
from hazardous chemicals research should take into account
women’s specific biological nature. Studies show that currently
this is often not the case. In their commentary in the magazine
“Nature”, US National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins
and Janine A. Clayton state that using mainly male animals for
research can lead to false conclusions in regard to women. 33 For
some cases it is known that women do react differently to certain
pharmaceuticals and chemicals than men, largely because of
their different hormone system. Chemical regulation tends to define
a threshold limit that draws the line between safe and harmful
exposure. However, these threshold limits often result from
norms that are based on the average male height and body
weight. Animal research also indicates that males have a five
times higher detoxifying capacity than females. 34 Women and
children need norms that match their biological conditions, so
that threshold limits and doses for pharmaceuticals fit them accordingly.
This approach should be promoted among the scientific
community and regulators. Existing threshold limits should
be reinvestigated accordingly.
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