浪花直播

In June this year, governments agreed to establish a new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution. Alongside the bodies for climate change and biodiversity, we finally have a platform dedicated to the third planetary crisis: pollution. The job is straightforward to state and hard to do: give decision-makers clear, independent evidence and practical options so countries can protect health and the environment while providing all the important benefits to society that come from the chemical sciences.

The 浪花直播 has argued for this for years. Many of you joined our consultations, wrote evidence, and helped make the case that chemistry must sit in a broader conversation that includes engineers, social scientists, economists, and communities most affected by pollution. Thank you! Our community will be central to what happens next.

The new panel has five core functions: horizon scanning for emerging issues; assessments of priority problems; providing up-to-date information; facilitating information-sharing, particularly with developing countries; and building capacity across all its work. Each matters to chemists. Horizon scanning needs analytical innovation and data. Assessments require rigorous synthesis, from fate and transport to exposure and toxicology. Information-sharing works only if we publish in accessible forms. Capacity-building means designing methods and tools that others can use, not just papers they can cite.

With that scope, the Panel鈥檚 Interdisciplinary Expert Committee will have to choose how to spend finite time and money. Here is where I think chemistry can offer a helpful way of thinking. In a perspectives piece Camilla Alexander-White and I drafted, we propose a simple, three-axis frame for organising evidence and setting priorities:

• Impact: how severe are the environmental and health harms?
• Societal service: how essential is the function the chemical enables?
• Readiness: how close are credible solutions 鈥� from substitution to process redesign 鈥� to real-world deployment?

Plot any issue in that space and the choices become clearer. If harms are severe, the service is vital, and solution readiness is low, the emphasis should be on rapid innovation: targeted R&D, demonstration projects, and incentives to scale. Think of processes or materials that underpin medical, water, or energy services where abrupt removal is not an option. If harms are severe, the service is frivolous, and solutions are not ready, that points to restriction, sunset dates, and demand-side measures while safer alternatives are developed. Where harms are slight and solutions are available, we should remove barriers and adopt them quickly 鈥� often a question of procurement, standards and training rather than more research.

Why is this useful? Because it stops us treating 鈥渃hemicals鈥� as a single category and will help the Panel line up the right expertise for the right task. 鈥淚mpact鈥� draws in toxicology, exposure science, environmental monitoring and epidemiology. 鈥淪ocietal service鈥� demands economics, sociology and behavioural science: how people use products, what values they hold, and what trade-offs they will accept. 鈥淩eadiness鈥� brings in green and sustainable chemistry, engineering, business models and scale-up. The Panel needs all of this. Our proposal lists disciplines the Panel鈥檚 Interdisciplinary Expert Committee can call on and outlines a 鈥渘etworks-of-networks鈥� model so civil society scientists and knowledge holders can contribute without compromising independence.

Independence matters. Trust will depend on how the Panel manages conflicts of interest, includes diverse perspectives, and communicates with absolute clarity about what the evidence shows and what it does not. As scientists we must act as honest brokers: set out options, consequences and uncertainties, and let policymakers make the choices. That is demanding work, and we will need training and support to do it well.

What can you do now?

First, bring your specialty into the tent. Whatever your field 鈥� analytical chemistry, materials science, AI methods, exposure modelling, remediation technologies, or the social sciences 鈥� there is a place for it. The Panel will need people who can cross disciplines and translate evidence into usable insights. If that sounds like you, step forward.

Second, document solutions, not just problems. If you have a safer synthesis, a lower-impact solvent system, a reuse model that works, or a monitoring approach others could adopt, write it up in a form non-specialists can use. Share data. Share protocols. Share the pitfalls as well as the wins.

Third, help us test the three-axis approach. Pick an issue you know well and try to locate it on the map: impact, service, readiness. Note what evidence you used and where the gaps are. That simple exercise is often enough to reveal what decision-makers need next: more hazard data, better exposure information, a behavioural trial, or a pilot plant.

Finally, stay engaged. The RSC will track the Panel鈥檚 set-up, including opportunities to join assessment groups and contribute to horizon scanning. When the first work programme is agreed, we will highlight how members can help and where to send evidence and case studies.

This is a moment to be practical and optimistic. 浪花直播 has already delivered cleaner processes, safer materials and countless health and environmental protections. With a focused, inclusive science-policy panel and a clear way to prioritise action, we can go further and faster 鈥� cutting pollution risks where they are greatest while keeping the services societies rely on.

• Professor Tom Welton OBE FRSC is Editor of RSC Sustainability, a past president of the 浪花直播, and the RSC鈥檚 Ambassador for Sustainable Chemicals Policy.