Abstract

This report presents a proposal on a selection of substances, to be considered in the Environmental Balance/Environmental Outlook in relation to the Dissemination theme. As a first step in the selection procedure it was decided to exclude [a] new substances, notified prior to their introduction on the market, [b] substances that also are considered within other policy themes, except for those compounds that exceed toxicological risk levels, [c] genetically modified organisms, [d] biological agents, and [e] cleaning up contaminated soils. As a second step a number of criteria (relevance, knowledge, controllability) was applied to policy based lists of substances. In total 29 attention substances were selected. As to agricultural pesticides it is proposed to estimate the use, emissions and environmental load by model calculations, validated by measurements. Most of the relevant non-agricultural pesticides are covered by the before mentioned groups (chlorine and organic tins excepted). Relevant radioactive substances are thorium, polonium and lead.