Lancaster Environment Centre

The Centre for Chemicals Management has been established to provide an integrated approach covering all aspects of chemical fate, behaviour and effects.

This ranges from development of new chemicals designed for fitness of purpose without resulting in adverse impact on human health or the environment to safe disposal options.

This includes providing input to the "design" of new chemicals that are "fit for their purpose" but avoid the physico-chemical properties which lead to undesirable traits in the environment, such as persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity.

Vision

The chemical industry develops and produces a vast array of products that are vital to our economy and quality of life. However, the use and release of some chemical products, by-products or intermediates has resulted in risks to the natural environment and to human health. It is therefore crucial that we continue to develop a detailed understanding of how chemicals behave in the environment, in order to identify the inherent beneficial or detrimental effects of chemical use. This will allow the risks and benefits of the use of chemicals to be assessed, ultimately resulting in the development of 'greener' chemicals which pose a minimal risk to biota and the environment.

Through our work in the Centre for Chemicals Management we aim to provide sound, cutting edge science which addresses important issues, to:

• Underpin sustainable chemical management through sound science
• Influence chemicals management policy, and to work with industry to improve environmental quality, training and education
• Undertake cutting edge research and chemicals evaluation, to aid the move towards a sustainable future for chemicals of commerce
• Improve procedures to measure, predict and model chemical fate, behaviour and effects
• Provide effective design and use of chemicals
• Develop reliable and sensitive measurement/tracking of chemical movement in the environment
• Assess of the effects on natural systems and target organisms
• Provide responsible disposal/destruction/re-use of chemicals
• Provide improved procedures for assessing the potential for remediation strategies

The ultimate goal of regulation is to provide a pro-active system for the evaluation of thousands of commercial chemicals that can be undertaken before and during large scale production.

Furthermore the regulation should incentivise industry to design chemicals from the outset that achieve their purpose, that don’t result in harmful effects to the environment or humans, and that can also be used and disposed of/re-cycled with minimal environmental impact.