Formaldehyde is used as a biocide, a preservative and a fixing agent, in many consumer goods and construction products … and also, on a small scale, in some cosmetics. It is known as potentially carcinogenic. Its classification may be soon revised for a more stringent category. At least, this is what the French Anses asks the European authorities to do.
November 22, 2011
The Anses, the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety, is an "organism that must help the French authorities to implement the European regulation on classification and labelling of chemical substances". As such, it has asked the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to revise the classification of formaldehyde to list it in the upper category of carcinogenic products.
Currently, formaldehyde is considered by the European regulation as a "suspected carcinogenic substance", the Anses says.
On the other hand, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies it in the "substances carcinogenic to humans" group.
In 2008, the Agency ha evaluated the sanitary risks for the public at large then, in 2009, the occupational risks.
Its opinion: for the public at large, "the risk to develop a cancer due to the inhalation of formaldehyde alone is negligible". Nevertheless, in some professional sectors, long-term repeated exposures to peaks of formaldehyde concentrations may lead to an excess in the risk of nasopharynx cancers.
This is why, by the name of the French authorities, it sent a proposal to make the classification of formaldehyde more stringent on the European level.
This proposal is currently submitted to a public …
