Now Is the Time to Act for a Strong REACH!

Our ship Arctic Sunrise started a two week journey on Friday, 6th October 2006 from Copenhagen. The ship will visit five Baltic ports. During the visits we will invite politicians, journalists and the general public on board, to gather support for a strong European Union chemical legislation - REACH.

Read Satu's Tour Diary

ACT: Tell your members of the European Parliament to vote for REACH

See detailed schedule for the tour

18th October: Porvoo, Finland

The managers of Finnish PVC producer Finnplast accepted today the blood sample that Paula Vesala from pop group PMMP “returned to sender” at the factory gate close to Porvoo. Greenpeace activists started a demonstration next to the company gate, handing out leaflets and holding banners saying “Finnplast – get out of our blood – use safer alternatives”.

16th October: Tallinn, Estonia

Estonian ministers didn’t come to the press conference this morning, but the press representative of the Minister of Environment, Manuela Pihlap, was present. She said that the ministers haven’t yet decided the line they are going to follow in REACH negotiations. Our Toxic Patrol went shopping today, and found several products in the shelves containing hazardous chemicals. Estonian media was very interested in problems connected with those chemicals.

13th-14th October: Stockholm, Sweden

The Arctic Sunrise has arrived to Stockholm. The new Swedish government, together with members of the Swedish Parliament and the EU Parliament from all the established Swedish parties except for the Moderates, today showed their support for Greenpeace in the final battle for a stronger REACH.

11th October: Klaipeda, Lithuania

Greenpeace toxic patrol hoovered the office of the Mayor of Klaipeda, Mr. Rimantas Taraskevcius. The hoovering aims to make the connection between dangerous chemicals in household dust and dangerous chemicals in human blood more concrete.

9th October: Riga, Latvia

Latvian Minister of environment Raimonds Vejonis signed a declaration supporting Greenpeace demand for a stricter European chemical legislation REACH. Latvian musician Eriks Stendzenieks participated in blood testing arranged by Greenpeace and local NGO Zemes Draugi in Latvia. The test results showing concentrations of dangerous chemicals were published on Arctic Sunrise.

See video from Latvia:

Dangerous chemicals can be found everywhere

We are exposed to numerous chemicals in daily life. Many of these chemicals are hazardous, many have never been tested for their safety. Greenpeace has carried out tens of investigations and analyzed hundreds of samples. We have shown that toxic substances can be found in for example mobile phones (e.g. flame retardants), children's wear  (alkyphenols), or in your cosmetics (phthalates) - and many other products around us. We have also found toxic substances in rainwater, household dust and in the blood of pregnant women and the umbilical cord.

There is no place left in the world without hazardous chemicals. Now is our chance to change it!

Read more about REACH

Read more about our ship MY Arctic Sunrise

Read more about how substitution will work on our new site Substitutionworks.com

Read more about how we can eliminate toxic chemicals (greenpeace.org)

Support our work for a toxics-free future!