Читать книгу The Regulatory Implosion. Emotions and Gender in the Era of plastic - Estela Gutiérrez Rodríguez - Страница 7

The chemical substances with the capacity to alter the hormonal system are, legally speaking, the great unknown. One of the most important moments in this matter were the complaints made by the biologist Rachel Carson in 1960 through her work, Silent Spring, in which she denounced the damage that was being caused to flora, fauna and the environment in general, due to the use and abuse of substances such as DDT, contained in pesticides or “biocides” (as she herself called them) that were used indiscriminately in crops to kill insects and thus improve production5.

The United States citizens did not wait, and the streets were full of public protests, demanding governamental responsibility in prevention and security with respect to these substances. The first institutions to react in defense to such demonstrations were the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), among others.

It was the beginning of community activism through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) in defense of the environment and the human ecosystem. We call them, “Global Communities”, organizations that today, already essentially represent legal-administrative globalization.

The European Union (EU), as we will see later, at the time when the possible consequences of these chemical substances were scientifically made known, also alerted its institutions to carry out the pertinent investigations.

Several EU member states began to establish national research programs. Most of them did so, alarmed by the scientific reports on the matter and appealing to point 99 of the judgment of May 5, 1998 of the Court of Justice, in whose case C180 / 96 it indicated.

“When doubts remain about the existence or scope of risks to people’s health, the institutions should adopt protective measures without necessary to wait for the reality and seriousness of such risks to be fully demonstrated”.