Trade and Industry Undersecretary Elmer C. Hernandez, also managing head of the Board of Investments (BoI), stressed at the opening of the Regional Workshop on Chemical Hazard Communication and Implementation of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for ASEAN the importance of proper chemicals labelling system.
Hernandez said the government has already laws on transboundary movement of chemicals but it has no law mandating the proper usage of chemicals domestically.
"We don’t have the labeling regulations as to the toxicity of different chemicals," Hernandez said.
The committee incharge of drafting the bill is composed of the DTI, Department of Agriculture, Transportation, consumer groups, industry groups like the Samahan sa Pilipinas ng mga Industriyang Kimika (SPIK), and non-governmental organizations.
The law must be passed in time for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which is also the implementation year of the GHS.
"The Philippines pledged to implement the GHS by 2008," Hernandez said.
The Philippines made this commitment during the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, which recognized the noble objectives of the harmonized system to promote the safe handling, transportation and use of chemicals, as well as to enhance occupational health and safety, and to uphold environmental protection.
Hernandez also quoted studies which showed that the prevailing international system of classification and labeling of chemicals is inadequate.
The recent study of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITART) showed that 70 percent of countries surveyed have labeling difficulties, mislabelling or lack of comprehension of hazard communication elements that result to human or environmental health problems.
The International Labor Organization (ILO), on the other hand, estimated that work-related fatalities attributed to dangerous substances number about 438,000 annually worldwide.
"Even our homes are not safe from chemicals-related accidents," Hernandez noted.
He cited the case of 27 children in Bohol, who were killed and 77 others hospitalized when an agricultural pesticide left in the kitchen was mistaken for cooking flour and mixed with other ingredients in preparing a local sweet cassava delicacy.
"Such disasters would have been prevented if only a more effective chemical hazard communication system is in place and strictly observed," Hernandez said.
Thus, he stressed, it is not only imperative but moral as well that every nation in the world adopts the GHS towards the achievement of safer and healthier human activities.
In the case of the Philippines, Congress has passed an act known as the Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Act in 1990, which bans the importation, storage and transportation of toxic nuclear wastes into or through the Philippines.
Also inspired by the Montreal Protocol, the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999 was passed providing a holistic national program for air pollution management.
In connection with the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, an Administrative Order was issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1994 to restrict the importation of recyclable materials containing hazardous substances.
The government also issued an Executive Order as early as 1999 establishing an inter-agency committee on climate change.
The Philippines also promulgated the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act of 1992 providing for the establishment of a national integrated protected areas system to conserve and use biodiversity in a sustainable manner.
