A/HRC/36/41 necessary information on safety precautions or health risks linked to toxic chemicals is often unavailable or inaccessible to workers. Information may be in a foreign language, and labelled pictures may be indecipherable or too small to be legible. States continue to allow the use of industrial chemicals and pesticides under the presumption that personal protective equipment will be used, and that it will be used as effectively as expected. However, workers often do not have access to necessary protective equipment of reasonable quality, and the conditions under which they are expected to use the equipment are often completely unreasonable; thus, risk assessments are inaccurate. Workers are exposed to substances whose health effects have not been studied adequately. Adverse health impacts from chronic occupational exposure to toxic chemicals may not manifest as a disease for several years. Due to these and other factors, only a small percentage of workers have access to an effective remedy for violations of their rights. 35. Child labourers, female workers, migrant workers and residents of low-income communities are significantly more vulnerable to toxic impacts due to unique sensitivities, cumulative impacts or unequal protections under the law. One of the worst forms of child labour is that in which children work with, or are exposed to any level of, hazardous substances. WHO has published studies showing that children who work with hazardous substances have shorter average lifespans. Children are also at risk through the transmission of their parents’ occupational exposures, in particular from their mother while they are in the womb or through breast milk. 36. States must ensure that workers are able to enjoy the right to safe and healthy working conditions.40 States must protect the right of workers to just, decent and favourable conditions of work by preventing occupational exposure to toxic chemicals, a right that is indivisible from the right to the highest attainable level of physical and mental health and the right to physical integrity. 41 States must ensure that workers have access to information and effective remedy for violations; they must also ensure that migrant workers enjoy the same rights as nationals of the State of employment regarding protection from toxic exposure.42 Gender 37. Biological differences between men and women, such as physiological and hormonal differences, create differing susceptibilities to the effects of exposure to toxic chemicals.43 Women, for example, are more likely to store higher levels of environmental pollutants in their tissues than those found in men. During pregnancy, lactation and menopause, women’s bodies undergo changes that may increase their susceptibility to health impacts from toxic exposure. Furthermore, due to differences in social roles, including occupational and household roles, women and men are exposed differently to toxic chemicals with respect to, among other things, the substances encountered and the degree of exposure. 38. Studies show that women’s exposure to pesticides can cause miscarriages, premature births, birth defects and low birth weight. Other studies show strong correlations between cancer and various toxic chemicals used in certain cosmetic products and also found in the environment. Studies show that sperm counts and testosterone levels have fallen dramatically among men in industrialized countries since the 1940s, and such decreases have been linked to toxic chemicals. 40 41 42 43 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 7 (b). Ibid., art. 12 (2) (b) and (c). The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has interpreted the right to health, as defined in article 12 of the Covenant, as extending to underlying determinants of health, including healthy occupational and environmental conditions. See the Committee’s general comment No. 14, para. 11; see also the Committee’s general comment No. 18 (2005) on the right to work, para. 7. International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, art. 25. United Nations Development Programme, Chemicals and Gender, Gender Mainstreaming Guidance Series (2011). 9