EU's REACH for Politicized Science
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is touting a campaign to further politicize science in the European Union. The proposed legislation before the European Parliament, the Registration Evaluation Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) would require a massive program chemical testing program and establishment of yet another EU bureaucracy – the European Chemicals Agency – without scientific justification.

The REACH legislation, if approved, would not be the first time that the EU has allowed their environmental health and safety policy to be dictated by politics rather than science.

The EU has already decided to ban pesticides and related chemical based purely on politics not toxicity. As The Official Journal of the European Union explained in 2004, "In the 70s, a political decision was taken to reduce to ‘zero' the presence of pesticides, independent of their toxicity." [emphasis added]

While various NGO's have decried the supposed politicization of science in America, they champion it in Europe. Unfortunately, Europe doesn't yet have a Data Quality Act to protect the integrity of science.