More than three decades have passed since the publication of Chemie im Haushalt, Rainer Griesshammer’s guide to chemicals in the home. It became an instant non-fiction bestseller. Compared with the 1980s and the time before that, we now live in a world with far fewer unregulated hazardous chemicals in the home and – more importantly, for it is a much larger field of application – in industry. This is due to more robust regulation, a frequent area of work for us here at the Oeko-Institut in recent decades.
However, this does not mean that we can rest on our laurels. With so many new substances and users, we must be meticulous in monitoring and assessing the potential risks to human health and the natural environment. As with any area of scientific discovery, there are still gaps in our knowledge, which makes it more difficult to predict future scenarios, as we must.…
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