We Cannot Afford to Manage Chemicals One at a Time

Opinion by Sheila Aggarwal-Khan (geneva)Wednesday, October 28, 2026Inter Press Service GENEVA, October 28 (IPS) - Governments today face an extraordinarily difficult set of tasks: cutting emissions, protecting nature, reducing pollution, creating jobs, strengthening economies, and improving people’s health, all while public finances remain under pressure. Sheila Aggarwal-KhanChemicals sit at the centre of many of those tasks. They are essential to almost every economy and embedded in more than 95 per cent of manufactured goods. An estimated 40,000 to 60,000 industrial chemicals are in commerce globally, moving through increasingly complex supply chains and into billions of products used every day.For much of my career, I have worked at the intersection of industry, the economy, and the environment. One lesson has become increasingly clear to me over the decades: the greatest gains come when chemical safety is built into economic and industrial decisions from the outset, rather than addressed only after harm has occurred. The global construction sector makes this particularly clear; chemicals and materials selected today can remain in buildings for decades. Safer choices at the desi...