Citizens having their say on chemicals regulations
ABOUT OUR TEAM
Chemicals regulations are almost impossible for citizens to understand and talk about. The whole domain is highly specialised and technical, and this means that when there are consultations, ordinary citizens can’t really participate.
No doubt citizens do benefit from innovation in chemicals, directly through the products they enable, or indirectly through the economic growth powered by innovation on chemicals. Industrial chemicals are used for a huge percentage of the products citizens use on a daily basis.
However citizens also bear the brunt of the consequences of chemicals, on their health, in their homes and their environments. When those consequences become increasingly obvious, it is left to citizens to cope.
Our project asks: what if citizens were to get a say on what form of chemicals regulation they actually want? What would a chemicals regulation system devised by citizens actually look like?
We aim to achieve this through citizen juries, in which people are able to hear evidence from a wide range of experts and different perspectives, and deliberate together regarding that evidence, before finally coming to conclusions regarding which measures regulators and legislators should be taking.
Citizen juries on chemicals regulation will open up a space for citizens’ deliberative participation in framing chemicals regulation in the UK. Our overarching aim is to develop a robust and scalable methodology that can be used for citizen juries across the country. These citizen juries will raise awareness among citizens, and create opportunities for citizens to understand the issues around synthetic chemicals, and develop their own vocabulary to talk about them. The ‘verdicts’ of the juries will be a mouthpiece for citizens to communicate their perceptions of acceptable levels of risk and what they want the chemicals regulatory system to deliver - once they have had a chance to obtain information and deliberate on it together as a diverse social group. Finally, they will be a channel for citizens to lobby regulators and counterbalance the lobbying by industry that already occurs.