IPEN SEA Snapshots September 2020

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SEPTEMBER 2020

SEOUL COURT RECOGNIZES OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE OF SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS WORKER. In another victory from SHARPS' long struggle to get recognition of illnesses linked to semiconductor manufacturing, a judge with the Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of a former Samsung employee who contracted a disorder of the spine and eyes while working at a Samsung semiconductor factory. According to the ruling, “. . . the protocol for recognizing occupational diseases shouldn't be stacked against workers, who already face the disadvantage of having to demonstrate [that their disease resulted from their work environment]”.

PHILIPPINES BANS 37 LEAD-CONTAINING SPRAY PAINTS. The country's Food and Drug Administration banned 37 spray paint products as they exceeded allowable limits of lead in paint and warned that “appropriate regulatory sanction shall be executed to establishments that are continuously marketing these products". It will be recalled that EcoWaste Coalition and IPEN last July 2020 released the “Lead in Spray Paints for Consumer Use in the Philippines” report, which reveals that 37 of the 87 analyzed spray paints obtained from retailers in 20 cities and one municipality failed the 90 ppm regulatory limit.

BAN TRANSBOUNDARY FLOWS OF E-WASTE INTO THAILAND. EARTH and their Czech NGO partner ARNIKA produced a short video on how electronic waste from around the world are being dumped in Thailand. The dumping of electronic waste and scrap has a devastating impact on the environment and people's health. EARTH and ARNIKA call for, among others, national policymakers to ban transboundary flows of e-waste that cannot be reused and is fit only for material recycling and disposal.

RUBBER DUCKY STILL CONTAINING PHTHALATES. In a follow-up to their last year's study, Toxics-Free Corps in China released the results of their 2020 investigation on the phthalic plasticizer contents in the yellow rubber ducky. Samples came from e-commerce platforms, offline stores specializing in selling maternal and child supplies, and China’s top 3 e-commerce platforms. The yellow rubber ducky samples gathered for this investigation contained phthalic plasticizers 4.81-409 times as much as the national standard, which was even higher than the measurement results in 2019.

ACCELERATE GLOBAL PHASE OUT OF LEAD IN PAINT. IPEN Participating Organizations in the region will take part in the eighth International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (ILPPW) on 25–31 October 2020. CAP Malaysia, Gita Pertiwi Indonesia, and CGFED Vietnam have registered their events for the week of action, while IDIS Philippines and Nexus3 Indonesia are expected to join too. Check out the different campaign materials available for this year's week of action and you might want to participate as well.

IPEN SEA REGIONAL CONFERENCE. Preparations are underway for IPEN Southeast and East Asia's virtual regional conference happening in November 2020, with the theme Prevent and Reduce Urban Pollution from Toxic Chemicals: Citizen Science in Southeast and East Asia. The four-part series aims to enhance citizen science capabilities within the regional network with presentations from regional and global experts on successful citizen science initiatives as well as perspectives on citizen science as it relates to the SDGs, the COVID-19 pandemic, gender, and community health. Conference registration will be opening soon.

SNAPSHOTS is a monthly news brief featuring the latest work of IPEN Participating Organizations in the Southeast and East Asia region.

Do you want your latest stories and updates featured in SNAPSHOTS? Share them to our IPEN SEA regional list serve ipen-sea@npogroups.org or email them to lesquillo@ecowastecoalition.org

IPEN SEA Regional Hub: Ecowaste Coalition Philippines
78-A Masigla Extension, Barangay Central, 1100 Quezon City, Philippines
(+632) 8294 4807 / info@ecowastecoalition.org / www.ecowastecoalition.org
Contact Point: Lia Jasmin M. Esquillo, IPEN SEA Regional Coordinator

https://ipen.org

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