The New Zealand Government has proposed mandatory pre-sale asbestos testing for children’s toys and craft products containing sand.
The reason given by Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Cameron Brewer is difficult to argue with.
“Families should be able to buy a product off the shelf, or online, and trust that it is safe, particularly when it comes to items used by children.”
After asbestos was discovered in some consumer sand products, 23 recalls covering around 46,000 products followed. Every product identified to MBIE as testing positive was recalled.
But in announcing the proposed new safety measures, the Minister went further.
“These products should never have entered our market in the first place.”
That statement is about more than children’s sand.
It expresses an important principle of public health regulation: where there is a credible risk of harmful exposure, should government wait until people have been exposed and then respond — or should the regulatory system try to prevent that exposure in the first place?
For New Zealanders concerned about glyphosate, it is a question worth asking.
This Isn’t A Comparison Between Glyphosate And Asbestos
It is important to be clear about what we are — and are not — suggesting.
Asbestos and glyphosate are different substances with different uses, exposure pathways, scientific evidence and regulatory histories.
Asbestos is a known human carcinogen. Glyphosate, by contrast, remains an approved herbicide active ingredient used extensively in agriculture, horticulture, forestry and household weed control.
But that does not mean there are no serious scientific questions about glyphosate.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialised cancer agency of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).
IARC found “limited” evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and “sufficient” evidence in experimental animals. It also concluded there was “strong” evidence for genotoxicity — the ability to damage genetic material — for both glyphosate and glyphosate-based formulations.
IARC’s classification is a hazard assessment. It identifies the strength of the evidence that glyphosate can cause cancer; it does not tell us the probability that a particular level of exposure will cause cancer in an individual.
And the scientific evidence has continued to develop.
As we reported recently, a new peer-reviewed laboratory study exposed human intestinal cells to glyphosate at concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 100 mg/L.
Researchers found a significant increase in micronuclei — a recognised marker of chromosome damage or disruption during cell division — at every concentration tested, including the lowest, 0.01 mg/L.
That study does not show that consuming food or water containing glyphosate at 0.01 mg/L will damage a person’s DNA. Cells in a laboratory dish are not the same as a human body.
But the researchers did not identify a concentration within the range they tested at which the genotoxic effect disappeared.
That is precisely why continuing scrutiny matters.
The comparison we are making here isn’t between asbestos and glyphosate.
It is between the regulatory principles used to protect people from exposure — particularly when scientific evidence continues to evolve after a substance has already been allowed onto the market.
And the Government’s response to contaminated sand provides an unusually clear example of one such principle.
Finding The Problem After Sale Wasn’t Considered Enough
When asbestos was identified in children’s sand products, authorities responded.
Products were tested. Recalls were issued. Consumers were warned.
That is what we generally expect a product-safety system to do when something goes wrong.
But the Government has now concluded that responding after contaminated products enter the country isn’t sufficient.
Its proposed solution is an unsafe goods notice requiring mandatory pre-sale testing of toys containing sand and decorative, art and craft products containing sand.
The testing requirement would apply even where the sand is sealed inside a toy, because damage or misuse could create an exposure pathway.
More importantly, MBIE explains why it believes stronger intervention is necessary.
Existing prohibitions on asbestos, it says, “do not provide sufficient assurance” that products are free from asbestos or that products entering the market in future will be appropriately tested.
MBIE describes the proposed testing requirement as a “targeted and precautionary approach”: products that have not been appropriately tested would be restricted, while products for which there is sufficient evidence that they are asbestos-free could continue to be supplied.
In other words, the Government isn’t proposing simply to tell consumers how to use potentially contaminated products more carefully.
It is proposing to stop untested products reaching them.
That distinction matters.
Prevention Rather Than Managing Exposure
Much of chemical regulation operates through a different approach.
A hazardous substance may be permitted provided particular conditions are met: concentration limits, application instructions, protective equipment, withholding periods, environmental controls and warnings on labels.
Those measures are intended to manage risk.
But risk management and exposure prevention aren’t quite the same thing.
New Zealand’s response to the sand contamination effectively asks a question before the consumer ever encounters the product:
Have we established that this product does not contain the hazard we are concerned about?
Under the proposed approach, only then could it be sold.
That is a particularly precautionary approach to consumer protection.
And it raises a broader question about how consistently New Zealand applies that philosophy to chemical exposure.
What Does The Precautionary Principle Mean For Glyphosate?
The Environmental Protection Authority describes products containing glyphosate as “among the most common weedkillers used in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world”.
Glyphosate products are used commercially and domestically, on farms, roadsides, parks and other public spaces, and around people’s homes.
The EPA regulates glyphosate products as hazardous substances. Under New Zealand’s hazardous-substances regime, a glyphosate-containing substance must be covered by an EPA approval before it can be imported or manufactured in New Zealand, and the applicable controls must be complied with.
The regulatory approach is therefore not to prevent exposure altogether, but to manage the risks associated with an approved hazardous substance through controls governing how it can be sold and used.
But scientific knowledge does not stop developing when a chemical receives regulatory approval.
New studies appear. Exposure research improves. Biomonitoring becomes more sophisticated. Overseas regulators reconsider evidence. Questions emerge about formulations, occupational exposure, environmental exposure and possible effects that earlier regulatory assessments may not have been designed to detect.
The IARC classification itself demonstrates that scientific bodies can reach conclusions that warrant serious attention even while a substance remains legally approved for use.
And laboratory findings such as the recent human intestinal-cell study demonstrate why the evidence base cannot simply be frozen at the date an approval was granted.
That is why continuing regulatory scrutiny matters.
How Does New Zealand Know An Old Glyphosate Approval Remains Protective?
This is not merely a theoretical question.
The Environmental Protection Authority has previously said [PDF] that it “actively monitors the status of glyphosate in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas, reviewing new information as it becomes available.”
No More Glyphosate NZ subsequently asked the EPA under the Official Information Act for any document, policy, guidance, procedure or similar record describing how that active monitoring occurs.
The EPA told us there were none.
It refused that part of our request under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act because the requested documents did not exist.
That does not establish that the EPA ignores new evidence.
Nor does it establish that existing glyphosate approvals are unsafe.
But it leaves an important question unanswered.
What systematic process ensures that evidence emerging years or decades after a chemical was approved is identified, evaluated and, where necessary, acted upon?
The Government’s response to children’s sand demonstrates why that question matters.
“These Products Should Never Have Entered Our Market”
There is something unusually significant about those words.
They move responsibility upstream.
They don’t say parents should have checked the sand.
They don’t say teachers should have handled it differently.
They don’t say exposure would have been acceptable provided consumers followed instructions correctly.
And they don’t suggest waiting until evidence of harm appears among exposed children.
Instead, the Government’s position is that the system should have prevented the potentially hazardous product reaching people in the first place.
That is prevention.
It is also the kind of thinking that deserves a much wider place in discussions about chemical safety.
Glyphosate Raises A Different But Related Problem
For glyphosate, preventing every exposure is plainly not the current regulatory objective.
The chemical is approved for use, and regulators establish conditions intended to keep exposure within levels they consider acceptable.
The relevant question therefore isn’t whether glyphosate should be treated like asbestos.
It is this:
How confident should we be that the levels of exposure considered acceptable today remain supported by the best available evidence?
And behind that lies another question.
Who is continually checking?
Those questions become particularly important for substances that have been used for decades.
Approval should not mark the end of regulatory scrutiny.
It should mark the beginning of continuing surveillance.
New Zealand Already Accepts The Precautionary Principle
The Government’s response to children’s sand shows that precaution is not some impossible regulatory ideal.
When circumstances justify it, New Zealand is prepared to require testing before sale, remove products already on the market and strengthen regulation so that the same problem is less likely to happen again.
In its consultation on the proposed unsafe goods notice, MBIE explicitly calls this a “targeted and precautionary approach.”
Commerce Minister Cameron Brewer summed up the objective simply:
“It is vital that Kiwi parents, caregivers and teachers can have confidence that products available in New Zealand are safe.”
We agree.
But that principle shouldn’t end at the classroom door.
Whether the potential exposure comes from a children’s product, food, drinking water, a workplace, a public park or a chemical used around the home, New Zealanders should be able to expect a regulatory system that does more than respond after something goes wrong.
They should be able to expect one that actively looks for emerging evidence, tests old assumptions against new knowledge and acts when the evidence warrants it.
The important lesson from the children’s sand response isn’t about sand.
It is that preventing harmful exposure is better than discovering it afterwards.
The question is how consistently New Zealand applies that principle.
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