Women and girls are more likely to be exposed and harmed by toxic chemicals. (Photo credit: PeopleImages)
Exposure to dangerous chemicals disproportionately impacts the health of women and girls worldwide, creating a human rights crisis that demands government intervention, says a United Nations report.
Hazardous chemicals—often from petrochemical, extractive, and agricultural industries—have been shown to cause cancers, infertility, miscarriage, endometriosis, disability, and developmental and metabolic disorders, among other health conditions. They can also lead to death.
“The failure to address environmental violence from toxics is reminiscent of past and current failures of governments to stop actors that attempt to control women’s and girls’ bodies,” says the report, presented Friday by Dr. Marcos A. Orellana to the UN General Assembly. “Chemicals can no longer be a fringe issue in women’s rights or sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
An expert in international law and the law on human rights and the environment, Orellana serves as the UN’s Special Rapporteur (independent expert) on toxics and human rights. Exposure to a range of harmful substances without informed consent is widely considered a human rights issue.
‘Alarming’ science warns about chemicals
Women and girls are more likely to be affected by certain toxic chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine partly because their bodies react differently than male bodies, the report says. Females experience greater vulnerability to environmental exposures during menstruation, pregnancy, and childhood. Reproductive harms usually are not included in environmental assessments for new industry, the report says.
Women and girls are also more likely to encounter multiple toxins at work and home—for instance, using cleaning, medical, beauty, and personal care products that contain dangerous ingredients.
Females often have less decision-making influence in highly toxic industries, such as fossil fuels, the report says. And with 1 in every 10 women in the world living in extreme poverty, they may not have the resources, knowledge or power to protect themselves from exposure. (Poor and marginalized males also are leveraged to perform dangerous work with hazardous substances, and no complaints, the report notes.)
Consider: In countries such as Indonesia and Kenya, female workers in the waste management sector are heavily exposed to dioxins and furans (chemical byproducts that can cause severe hormonal problems) emitted from burning waste. Women also make up roughly 60 to 70 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries like Zambia, where pesticides and pesticide handling are poorly regulated.
Stricter laws are needed to protect health
To improve maternal and newborn health outcomes and protect lifelong health, the report says governments should actively consult with women and children from communities most affected by regulatory decisions.
Other recommendations include:
- Adjust the evaluation and regulation of toxic substances to consider the impacts of chemical exposures over time.
- Assess the impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals from the petrochemical industry.
- Ban harmful chemicals versus removing pregnant or breastfeeding people from hazardous worksites.
- Ensure risk assessments of an industry, facility or chemical take into account the long-term health and financial impacts of preterm birth, low birth weight, and other adverse birth outcomes.
- Make sure the results of all research funded by governments and international organizations address gender and sex differences, and include funding to explore the impact of toxic substances on gender-diverse people.
Only stronger national and international regulations can protect the environment and our bodies from gendered harms, especially in marginalized communities, the UN report says. Stronger regulations would also prevent future damage from toxins, the report says.
“Harm not only reaches through the pregnant person to the child and across the child’s life course but can also reach across generations, undermining the health of grandchildren before their parent has even been born.”
References
Report of the Special Rapporteur, United Nations General Assembly. “Implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes.”
Related
- Atinkut Asmare, B., Freyer, B. & Bingen, J. Women in agriculture: pathways of pesticide exposure, potential health risks and vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa. Environ Sci Eur 34, 89 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-022-00638-8
- Rumph JT et al. Uncovering Evidence: Associations between Environmental Contaminants and Disparities in Women’s Health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jan 23;19(3):1257. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19031257.
- Padula AM et al.; program collaborators for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes. A review of maternal prenatal exposures to environmental chemicals and psychosocial stressors-implications for research on perinatal outcomes in the ECHO program. J Perinatol. 2020 Jan;40(1):10-24. doi: 10.1038/s41372-019-0510-y.
- Pan J, Liu P, Yu X, Zhang Z, Liu J. The adverse role of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the reproductive system Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2024 Jan 17;14:1324993. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1324993.
- Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) International. “Gender & Chemicals.”
- World Health Organization (WHO). “Household air pollution.” October 16, 2024.