Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-22-Speech-2-191"
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"en.20050222.13.2-191"2
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"Madam President, our way of life is having an ever-greater impact on the environment. It would be all too easy to paint a black-and-white picture of nightmare scenarios, but we should not forget that we have succeeded in making enormous progress in various fields relating to environmental quality. One need only think of the Auto Oil I and II programmes which we used to improve the quality of petrol, in so doing combating the problem of acid rain, or the European legislation that has been used to achieve certain levels of air and water quality.
In spite of this, however, I do not believe that we can rest on our laurels. The figures are alarming; one in six deaths or diseases suffered by children in Europe is attributable to environmental factors, the incidence of allergic respiratory diseases having doubled over the past 20Â years, with every seventh child now affected, and nearly 10% of workers being exposed to carcinogenic substances.
This means that the Action Plan that is currently before us is urgently needed. We must ensure that the precautionary principle gains acceptance, not least for budgetary reasons. Public health should be regarded as our top priority in any case, but it is also true that poor public health is an excessive burden on our state budgets.
The form taken by the Action Plan therefore needs to be improved in the following respects. Although the Commission was right in its decision to prioritise the need to combat four environmentally-related diseases, the approach it has taken leaves much to be desired. No consideration has been given to a large number of recently published studies, and there are no provisions relating to the application of legal instruments, in contrast to the SCALE initiative.
There is also a lack of measures aimed at informing the public about the causal connection between environmental pollution and health, and no provision has been made for a long-term evaluation that would make it possible to examine whether the measures are helping to reduce environmentally-related health problems in a cost-effective manner. Priority should therefore be given to research into the production and use of everyday products that contain allergenic or carcinogenic chemicals."@en1
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