In February 2001, the European Commission (EC) released a White Paper, REACH 2001, detailing unique and unprecedented legislative proposals for the regulation of industrial chemicals, based on the Precautionary Principle. The object of these proposals was to reverse the escalating incidence of avoidable cancers, a wide range of other industrial diseases, and environmental contamination. However, REACH was aggressively opposed by the European and U.S. chemical industries, and even more so by the U.S. administration. The EC responded by making major concessions in its October 2003 REACH-based legislative proposals. This report critically analyzes REACH, and its 2003 revised proposals, and recommends that REACH be strengthened, not weakened. Furthermore, the report urges that regulatory policies of the United States and other industrialized nations be drastically reformed to comply with those of REACH. THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE AS THE BASIS FOR REACH Under the terms of the 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to life and its corollary, right to health, are the first and most important of all fundamental rights recognized by many international conventions. Thus, implementary legislation is needed to mandate that considerations of life and health take absolute precedence over economics and trade (1). One of the earliest scientific and legal expressions of this concept is the "Precautionary Principle," embodied in the 1992 Rio Declaration (2): "In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason