Consumer Products (Control of Biocides) Bill [HL]

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and to hear her concerns about there being too many advisory bodies and quangos. There is always a difficulty in knowing what they do and how they report. However, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on bringing the Bill forward.

Perhaps I might add another quote from Sir Alexander Fleming. When he received the Nobel prize for discovering penicillin, which he did at the medical school that I went to, St Mary’s, he said:

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them”.


That lesson might apply much more widely because, sadly, it applies to our armamentarium of antibiotics, and we now face a world where multiple resistance is becoming the norm. Professor MacLellan’s recent, fascinating lecture at the Royal Society described the urgent need to develop vaccines against some of the major bacterial killers. In 2022, 7.7 million deaths were attributable to bacterial infections worldwide, of which 80% were linked to antimicrobial resistance.

With rising antibiotic use, resistance is increasing, but biocides are not the solution. Biocides are a diverse group of poisonous substances, including preservatives, insecticides, disinfectants and pesticides, used for the control of organisms that are harmful to human or animal health or that cause damage to natural or manufactured products. The problem is that these chemicals are themselves harmful, both directly and by producing the cross-resistance and co-resistance to antimicrobials already referred to. When bacteria develop cross-resistance, their general defence mechanism is against multiple threats, both the biocides in consumer products and the antibiotics we use to fight infection. Meanwhile, co-resistance takes place when resistant genes are genetically linked. So there are two mechanisms, at least, and exposure to common biocides can inadvertently promote antibiotic resistance.

These manufactured chemicals are subject to little legal constraint, as already outlined, and almost no post-marketing surveillance. Fewer than 20% overall have been tested for toxicity, yet many cross the placenta, and chemical exposure seems even more harmful to children than to adults. Biocides act by damaging the cell wall of an organism, but that is not discriminatory. They also damage the cell wall of our own body’s living cells that they come into contact with. That is often our skin and the delicate cells of our respiratory tract. If the skin is irritated, a contact dermatitis develops; this is an eczema-like response that is itchy and sore, and the skin cracks, breaking the natural barrier function of the skin and allowing bacteria to enter and infect underlying tissues. An allergic response is separate and can also develop, as in allergic dermatitis and in asthma, which can be life-threatening. We all have protective commensal bacteria on our skin and in our gut and mucous membranes, but when they are damaged by biocides, harm results. Many cosmetics and some period products are being marketed as biocidal, but without the appropriate risk-assessment evidence.

The Bill would establish a biocidal consumer products advisory board, which I would welcome, to review scientific and social evidence on the use of biocides in consumer products, with a particular focus on microbiotoxicity. With rising incidence of childhood cancers, neurodevelopmental disorders, autism, allergies and childhood obesity, not to mention the rising infection rate, it is becoming negligent, to ignore the possible role of manufactured chemicals in our daily lives—hence the importance of the precautionary approach outlined in the Bill.