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Pathways and Countermeasures for Prevention and Control of New Pollutants
Summary
Researchers analyzed China's existing legislative framework for controlling emerging contaminants such as microplastics and persistent chemicals, finding that current law focuses on conventional pollutants and safety production while lacking effective governance mechanisms for new pollutants, and proposing a comprehensive legal system drawing on international models and civil liability principles.
In recent years, the harmfulness of new pollutants has attracted increasing attention from all sectors of society. In May 2022, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the “Action Plan for the Control of New Pollutants”, which takes precise pollution control, scientific pollution control, and lawful pollution control as the working principles. By 2025, complete the screening of chemical substance environmental risk assessment, dynamically release the list of key controlled new pollutants, and gradually establish and improve the regulatory system and management mechanism for toxic and harmful chemical substance environmental risk management. However, in the existing legislative system for chemical management, China mainly focuses on safety production and control of conventional pollutants, while the management of emerging pollutants appears relatively weak, lacking sufficient attention and effective governance measures. This legislative situation to some extent limits the effective promotion of the treatment of new pollutants. This article aims to establish the legislative value of “new pollutant control” from a legal perspective, explore its underlying connotations, and explain the necessity of establishing a legal system for new pollutant control. Based on existing laws, administrative regulations, and local government rules, analyze the situation of “new pollutant treatment” and obtain the application of governance laws in different regions. Based on other countries and regions’ legal documents on “new pollutant control”, summarize the reasons for the current confusion in “new pollutant control”, and connect it with the reasons for environmental tort liability attribution in the Civil Code, in order to establish a complete legal system for “new pollutant control”.
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