Mr. McGuinty, I could give you a brief U.S. perspective. As I said, I've worked with the phthalates panel for 17 years. In the early nineties we were working with Health Canada and getting very comprehensive reviews of the phthalates with Health Canada and Environment Canada.
Now, at the same time, the U.S. had in place review processes, but they were in silos, so we didn't have an agency that put everything together in a comprehensive manner. You've had this for a very long time, and you had that process in place before the European Union even thought about their chemicals program.
Many of the allegations about phthalates and other chemicals are based on hazard and hazard alone. What you need to do in the scientific framework is to look at not only hazard but also exposure. We certainly recently had a case in the U.S. in which a woman was challenged by a radio station to drink water. She died because she drank too much water. In that dose, it was certainly a hazard. In normal everyday doses, water is not, so the risk is low.
We know from measured data now that the exposure to phthalates is very low, certainly well below the level that causes any hazard in animals. We believe also that our current North American regulatory system has a precautionary basis to it, so that human health is well protected.