In March, she was appointed the Government’s special investigator on how chemicals legislation could also include mixtures and grouping of chemicals. To clarify what the assignment is about, she points to the floor, the table and the chairs in her office on the fifth floor of Geohuset.
It is the mixture of chemicals that is called the cocktail effect: that the negative health effects of individual chemical substances add to each other.
“We are surrounded by chemicals everywhere. Just here, where we are sitting now, there are a lot of chemicals: In the plastic floor, flame retardants in the textiles on the chairs, the color on the wall, and the coating of the table. The exposures are of course low but what effect does these long term exposures have on us all together? We do currently not have legal systems that assess the effects of those combined exposures”, says Christina Rudén.
It is this mixture of chemicals that is called the cocktail effect: that the negative health effects of individual chemical substances add to each other.
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