Lack of monitoring and information on the dispersal of an estimated 100,000 manufactured chemicals into the environment requires urgent attention, according to the European Environment Agency and the UN Environment Programme.
The agencies argue the EU and international legislative framework to control potentially hazardous chemicals need strengthening in the interests of public health and the environment.
They make their case in Low Doses, High Stakes, a joint report issued yesterday to mark the opening session of the Pan-European Environment Ministers Conference here.
"Since chemicals circulate globally, both through trade and through air and water, no country or region acting alone can protect its citizens and environment from risk - particularly as the number of chemicals is increasing all the time," said Mr Domingo Jimenez-Beltran, executive director of the EEA.
"We don't know enough about what is happening with chemicals. Things may already have gone too far," he said.
But improved scientific knowledge pointed to increasing long-term health effects of even low doses of certain hazardous chemicals.
Mr Klaus Toepfler, who took over last year as executive director of UNEP, said that while international efforts were encouraging, much work remained to be done.
"We must act decisively to reduce unwanted exposure to hazardous chemicals that persist and accumulate in the environment," he said.
A new international convention, to be signed tomorrow by environment ministers from 54 countries at the Aarhus conference, will attempt to control persistent organic persistent pollutants, known as "POPS". These include toxic chemicals such as the pesticide DDT.
But the former EU Environment Commissioner, Mr Carlo Ripa di Meana, said Aarhus's success would be judged by whether the conventions signed here would be enforced by 2002 - when environment ministers from western and eastern Europe, central Asia and North America hold their next meeting.
He believed institutions such as UNEP simply did not have the power to deal with global environmental problems.
Only when UNEP became the "guardian" of a growing body of environmental legislation, with the same clout as the World Trade Organisation or the International Monetary Fund, would the situation improve.
The European Eco Forum, which provides an umbrella for NGOs at the Aarhus conference, condemned the US and Canada for blocking "progressive proposals" to reduce energy consumption country by country to meet obligations under last December's Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.
Germany's opposition to providing the public with more control over the development of genetic engineering has been strongly condemned by a coalition of environmental groups and other non-governmental organisations at the conference.
The 200 representatives of NGOs from 49 countries in Europe, Central Asia, North America and the Middle East said Germany intended adding "insult to injury" by not signing the proposed Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.
