28th February, 2000
The chemicals management is neither the daily nor monthly topic in the media and in the policy making of Finland. The priorities in the environmental field are elsewhere: water protection and energy, for instance. Thus there has not been clear political pressure for any chemicals strategy. The public awareness on chemical contamination has been mainly raised through soil, sediment and groundwater contamination cases often caused by former use or process residues of chlorinated hydrocarbons in the forest industry. The present government doesn't mention chemicals or even sustainable product policy in its program. The only place where a goal in terms of the harmful substances is set on the government level is in the plan to make a national action program for the Baltic Sea protection, where 'the accumulation of harmful substances in the food web should be reduced'. The action program is under development.
On the other hand, the environmental NGOs as well as other independent organisations haven't put effort on raising up the public discussion on the chemicals. The only topic which received good publicity due to the initiative of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, was the use of methyltertbuthylether (MTBE) - the oxygenator compound in gasoline - and even this discussion was held few years later than in the U.S. and the other European countries. The presentation of the environmental NGOs in the negotiations concerning chemicals is at the moment welcomed and even asked for but non existent due to the lack of resources. Thus, the industrial organisations and farmers organisation have even better possibilities to have impact on the decisions here in relation to the environmental NGO's than in the rest of the Europe.
The lack of political interest has lead to the situation where the chemicals policy making is in hands of the authorities and experts. Therefore, the responsibility of the policy making is spread diffusely. Also, the few authorities taking care of the environmental control side of the chemicals use are loaded very much with the tasks coming from the EU -bureaucracy. The situation has sometimes advantages: a well formulated proposal for the chemicals law amendments due to the biocide directive implementation has made the law stricter in some points than the directive without opposition of the politicians. There article points have to be, of course, accepted in the international bodies before the ratification.
On the other hand, the worse side of the situation and few resources mean that Finland is not that constructive as it could be in the EU -level policy work. The preparation of the water framework directive in terms of the harmful substances is a good example. The opposition of Finland to integrate the OSPAR objective into the binding directive text has been very definitive. This is mainly due to the fact that the experts think the year 2020 for cessation of the emissions, losses and discharges is too close and on the other hand Finland waits for the revision of the EU chemicals policy. The position might be more constructive if there would be stronger political interest in the chemicals.
One big problem in the chemicals authority control in Finland has already for years been the difficulty to receive the data on the amounts of imported, produced or used industrial and consumer chemicals, although the registration system works otherwise reasonably well. The chemicals law sets the duty to register the amounts (the register is maintained by an organisation under the ministry of social affairs and health) but so far the companies have not obeyed it. The other weak point at the moment is the lack of emissions, discharges and environmental monitoring data. The environmental concentrations and pollution load are somehow known for the classical POP's and heavy metals, but basically all other data are very diffuse and sparse and doesn't give any good picture of the environmental contamination. The database system for registering all the authorised pollution load is public and good in Finland, but it doesn't contain very much to help to guide the chemicals policy.