Chemical hazards are a serious matter—too serious to be left for chemists to administer

A number of options and recommendations concerned with the need for future revisions of chemical regulations have been discussed during an international Hearing held on 30 October 1996 at the castle of Christiansborg, i.e. the Danish Parliament Building. Most prominent in the debate was the proposal that classification should be made obligatory for all existing chemicals, and this should be based on classification in broad groups or clusters of interrelated chemicals instead of the existing practice in which all chemicals are singled out for individual testing and classification. According to such a scheme, as a precautionary measure, each individual chemical in a group shall be classified and ranked in parallel to the most dangerous/hazardous chemical represented within the group.