On 1 April, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued a judgement against the European Commission’s decision to exempt decaBDE, a brominated flame retardant, from a list of hazardous substances banned in the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive. The judgment ends a legal disagreement that arose after several Member States as well as Norway and the European Parliament took the Commission to the ECJ for not respecting the RoHS procedure for banning of substances.

The plaintiffs - the European Parliament and Denmark, supported by Finland, Norway, Portugal and Sweden - lodged their legal case on the basis that the European Commission had been selective in the studies used to come to its decision to continue allowing the use of decaBDE even though alternatives were ‘practicable’, as the RoHS Directive stipulates. This decision also went against the opinion of the Commission’s own Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks, which strongly recommended ‘further risk reduction’ on the basis of a risk assessment undertaken to help decide whether decaBDE should be included in the RoHS Directive list of banned substances.

Many leading electronics manufacturers including Dell, HP, Apple, Lenovo, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and LG have already eliminated decaBDE from their products, a prime example of the redundancy of decaBDE and the innovative capabilities of the electronics industry. The European Commission’s attempt to legalise decaBDE clearly undermines environmental innovation, an integral part of the Lisbon Agenda.

“DecaBDE has been found in house dust and on windows inside homes and it has been shown to break down into even more toxic and already banned forms of this family of chemicals,” said Christain Farrar-Hockly from Health and Environment Alliance. “The presence of decaBDE is ubiquitous in our environment and presents a continuous potential threat to the healthy reproductive development of children. After more than 10 years of EU risk assessment, more and more worrying science adds to decaBDE having an ill bill of health.”

 Read the joint NGO press release