Blog
Media Release 8th July 2025.
Australia’s world highest cancer rates reflect our regulatory framework for chemicals and pollution and must drive urgent change.
ABC Four Corners story – Generation Cancer – last night revealed Australia’s shocking cancer rates in younger generations – for some cancers, the highest rate in the world.
But what makes Australia different to other countries when it comes to cancer rates?
Surely, we have the same best practice regulation of chemicals and pollution as other wealthy OECD countries?
Environmental health NGO’s and experts have long warned of Australia’s failing chemicals and pollution regulatory framework. A critical failure to uphold the precautionary principle, prioritising risk assessment ahead of hazard assessments and failing to guard against undue industry influence, has left our communities and environment without the safeguards it needs. Our children and future generations are paying the ultimate price for our industry-biased chemicals and pollution regulation.
A standout clue to the high incidence of bowel and other gut related cancers, is likely to be found particularly in the way Australia regulates pesticides – an issue absent from this story and narratives in general about Australia’s food production.
Our near 100% cost-recovery model of pesticide regulation leads to industry domination of policy outcomes that benefit the AGVET chemical industry ahead of public health and our environment. Regulated under the portfolio of Agriculture and not Health like other comparable countries, leaves Australian pesticide regulation at the mercy of industry influence ahead of public health and environmental protection. The allowable level of pesticide residues in the food Australia produces, consumes and exports is often comparatively higher than other countries and is creating obvious trade concerns.
Australia allows many AGVET chemicals to be used in Australia, that have been banned in other countries because of the health and environmental impacts they cause including cancer. And yet when new evidence and research about a pesticides toxicity and impacts to health and environment comes forward, Australia does not provide a re-registration system for pesticides that would consider this new evidence and adjust any regulation associated including restrictions or bans. This leaves our pesticide regulatory framework stuck in the past relying on outdated and often industry biased data.
Australian regulators do not assess the additive, cumulative or synergistic impacts of more than one chemical representing a fatal flaw in regulation at odds with our lived reality and one that industry continues to exploit to their advantage and profits. We live in a world drenched in synthetic petrochemicals. Our materials production systems reflect back to us this reality through our hazardous waste generation and the barriers it creates in pursuit of a Circular Economy. Plastic is a key example.
Australian chemicals and pollution regulation also fails to adequately protect women and children by applying simplistic safety factors on top of standard risk assessments. However, children are not little adults and do not process toxic substances in the same way as adults, risking irreversible damage to critical windows of their development.
Women are also more vulnerable to toxic substances, especially endocrine disrupting chemicals which are found prevalently in pesticides and plastics, risking their reproductive health and intergenerational impacts for babies in-utero.
In lock step with Australia’s highest cancer rates is our rate of biodiversity loss, suggesting that chemicals and pollution impacts play a significant role in addition to climate change and land clearance. Indeed, the Global Biodiversity Framework – to which Australia is a signatory – warns that countries need to reduce pollution, especially pesticides by half by 2030 to levels that do not adversely impact ecological systems. Yet Australia has not acted to uphold this critical target.
Australia has some 40 000 existing chemicals on their books that are available for use, but for which have never received a full chemical regulatory assessment after being grandfathered onto our system decades ago prior to our regulatory agency being created. We have fast-tracked 1500 polymers of low concern a year onto our market similarly without adequate assessment. And while civil society stakeholders have long warned of the potential and impending public health and environmental impacts of these regulatory failures, their voices are consistently dismissed.
Its time to ask whether we should continue to drench our urban environment, our children’s playgrounds and parks with a cocktail of dangerous pesticides. We know many of these pesticides come with neurotoxic impacts – a key concern given Australia’s high rates of brain cancers in children. This is just one clear, obvious and easy action to take to protect children’s health and our environment, while Australia’s river systems collapse and algal blooms decimate the marine food chain and coral reefs.
It’s time to urgently remedy the comparatively less protective health and environmental standards Australia has for PFAS – a group of more than 10 000 chemicals some of which are known carcinogens found prolifically in our environment.
We simply cannot continue to kick this can down the road. Chemicals and pollution should be afforded the highest level of government scrutiny and regulation.
ABC’s Four Corners Cancer Generation story demonstrates that the Australian government urgently needs a robust, independent chemicals and pesticide regulatory framework accountable to the public interest not corporate profits.
You can download this media release here: Cancer Generation response MR
