Call to ban testicular cancer causing toiletry chemicals

Nordic Council has urged EU to ban damaging toiletry chemicals that are linked testicular cancer and male infertility.

According to the report, the hormone-mimicking chemicals used routinely in toiletries, cosmetics, medicines, plastics and pesticides cause hundreds of millions of euros of damage to EU citizens every year and these endocrine disruptor compounds (EDCs) are thought to be particularly harmful to male reproductive health and can cause testicular cancer, infertility, deformation of the penis and undescended testicles.

The new report, from the Nordic Council of Ministers, focuses on the costs of these on health and the ability to work but warns that they "only represent a fraction of the endocrine-related diseases" and does not consider damage to wildlife.

The Nordic Council, representing the governments of governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, is demanding the European Union speeds up its plan to identify, assess and ban harmful EDCs. Sweden is already taking legal action against the EU over its missed deadlines, which it blamed on lobbying by the European chemical industry.

The report, called The Cost of Inaction, which uses the extensive health records collected by the Nordic countries to determine the incidence of the male reproductive health problems linked to EDCs and then uses Swedish data to estimate costs, assesses the proportion of the health problems attributable to EDCs, with a central estimate of 20 percent, leading to a conclusion that the male reproductive health problems cost the EU 470 million pounds a year.