Toxic substances

Some 100,000 chemical products are in use around the world today. Some 30,000 chemical products that contain substances classified as hazardous are manufactured in Finland or imported for sale here. These products contain a total of more than 5,000 different substances classified as hazardous. Various economic activities have also increased the concentrations of harmful heavy metals in the environment.

Emissions of such potentially harmful chemicals are widely released into homes, workplaces, the urban environment and the natural environment, depending on the ways the products that contain them are used. Finland’s environmental administration monitors and assesses how seriously the natural environment is burdened by chemicals and heavy metals.

Continuing uncertainty about environmental loads

Very little information is available on measured environmental loads around Finland. Such records are mainly limited to major point sources of emissions, such as large industrial plants. Even where such point sources are concerned, the overall chemical composition of these emissions may still not be fully understood. The loads of certain chemicals are not even measured, due to their low concentrations.

Municipal waste water treatment plants, for instance, only routinely measure variables linked to eutrophication and heavy metal concentrations in their treated effluent and sludge; although an extremely wide variety of other chemicals also enter municipal sewerage systems from homes, workplaces and smaller industrial premises.

Where many chemicals are concerned, point loads and diffuse loads are only estimated through calculations and extrapolation. Real information about observed concentrations in the environment is urgently needed to support these estimates.

Improving the monitoring of hazardous substances

EU legislation and Finland’s other international commitments mean that in future environmental loads of hazardous substances must be monitored much more widely than they have been so far. A major national survey that commenced in the beginning of 2003 will provide a lot more data on the concentrations in Finnish waters of the hazardous substances listed in the EU Water Framework Directive. The environmental monitoring of hazardous substances in Finland is also being more widely improved through HAASTE, a special project launched in 2002.

Radioactive substances are monitored in Finland by STUK – the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland.