A second round of negotiations to work out a new international law requiring companies to report to the public on their polluting emissions, under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), took place in Geneva, 2-6 July 2001.

The new chemicals law will come under the UNECE Aarhus Convention, which is intended to give the public more information and a greater say in environmental issues. Under the chemicals law, countries will have to establish pollution inventories known as pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs). PRTRs have already proved extremely effective in reducing pollution, even though they regulate in formation about pollution and not pollution itself. But by systematically bringing information on emissions into the public domain, PRTRs create public pressure to reduce pollution.

Technical experts from governments, NGOs and industry have held three days of informal discussions over issues such as which chemicals should be covered, which types of activities should be required to report and to what extent transfers of pollutants between companies should be covered as well as releases into the environment. They identified toxic and polluting substances regulated under the European Union's European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER), including carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, dioxins and heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic, as important to include in the registers. In addition, there was broad support among the experts for the inclusion of ozone-depleting substances (CFCs, HCFCs and Halons), though some experts pointed out that further steps might be needed to make the data available on accompany-specific basis as required under a PRTR. However, no agreement has so far been reached on the inclusion of carcinogenic substances listed on Group I of the World Health Organization. Group I being the list of substances proven to cause cancer in humans.