Do we need to use hazardous chemicals in society? The implementation of the "Essential-Use" Concept

Chemical legislation serves as an important regulatory tool to protect human health and the environment from the risksposed by substances of concern. Discussions at the EU level have focused on implementing the “essential-use” conceptin chemical regulations to improve their efficiency. In short, a use of a substance of concern should be permitted onlyif it is deemed “essential” – that is, if it is necessary for health, safety, or critical for the functioning of society, and thatthere is no safer alternative available. Although the European Commission recently published guiding criteria to considerfor implementing the “essential-use” concept as a tool to guide decision-making, more work is needed to investigate itspractical implementation. By taking the examples of uses of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), three persistent, mobile,and toxic (PMT) substances (i.e. allura red, benzophenone-4, and climabazole), and microplastics,this thesis aims to determine the type and amount of information needed to make a proper essentiality assessment. Thefunctional substitution approach was followed to determine the chemical functions provided by the case study substancesin their respective uses, and how these functions are linked with the services the substances provide in the end product.Based on this information, one use of allura red, and two uses of microplastics were deemed “nonessential”as the functions delivered by the substances are not necessary for the technical performance of the end product.Existing alternatives assessment frameworks were followed to identify, evaluate, and compare potential alternatives to thesubstances of interest to determine if suitable alternatives were available for the uses being considered. Suitable and saferalternatives could be identified for 28 uses of PFAS, for all uses of allura red, benzophenone-4, andclimbazole, and for seven uses of microplastics, which were deemed “non-essential”. This thesis also evaluates how the “essential-use” concept differs from current chemical legislation, and the implicationsof implementing such a concept to guide decision-making by taking the examples of the Stockholm Convention andthe REACH Regulation. The analysis suggests that no fundamental changes are needed in regulatory requirements toimplement the “essential-use” concept as authorities already have the capacity to gather the relevant information neededto determine if a use is (non-)essential. However, good cooperation with industry throughout the value chain is necessaryfor the competent authorities to properly understand the true purpose a substance of concern serves in the end product. Overall, the results suggest that the “essential-use” concept can be a valuable tool which presents the potentialto speed-up the decision-making by focusing on identifying the non-essential uses of substances of concern. The thesis can also be found here https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn%3Anbn%3Ase%3Asu%3Adiva-238367