News of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has recently published two interesting news with respect to REACH and CLP regulations focused on the development of the first report on registered substances mapped and the new submission portal for companies for poison centres that will allow to share information with them and submit the notifications on mixtures.
First report of the Regulatory Strategy
The first report of the Integrated Regulatory Strategy presents a mapping of the universe of registered substances that are on the EU market. This information helps authorities to identify, plan and monitor the progress on identifying and regulating substances of concern.
The report visualises the work that ECHA and the Member States have done to transform the vast data generated under REACH into knowledge on which substances need further hazard information, further risk management measures or for which substances authorities can conclude that they are not a priority at the moment.
Within the report, registered substances are divided into three main pools:
- High priority for risk management, covering around 270 substances. These are substances with an identified concern and for which further regulatory work is ongoing or can start based on currently available information.
- High priority for data generation and assessment, with around 1 300 substances of potential concern. Here further data needs to be generated or assessed to enable authorities to decide whether further regulatory risk management is needed.
- Low priority for further regulatory action at present. In this group, around 450 substances are considered as already sufficiently regulated and almost 500 substances have been concluded as low priority after assessment.
However, authorities still need to clarify in which pool the remaining 2 700 substances belong. This uncertain area is what is left after more than 10 years of systematic screening, focusing on substances of high concern. ECHA foresees that a significant number of them will undergo compliance checks or substance evaluation in the coming years to generate the necessary information for priority setting and assessment. Authorities need to speed up work on this uncertain area and to shorten the time between identifying a concern and initiating risk management measures. In particular, action to harmonise the classification or action under other legislation should be taken faster.
A new portal for centres
Another interesting novelty to be noted on this regulation is the new ECHA’s submission portal for poison centres.
Under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation, companies placing hazardous mixtures on the market have to provide information about these mixtures to the relevant national appointed bodies. This information has to be provided in a harmonised format from:
- 1 January 2020 for mixtures for consumer use
- 1 January 2021 for mixtures for professional use
- 1 January 2024 for mixtures for industrial use
The appointed bodies in Member States make this information available to poison centres so that they can provide rapid medical advice in the event of an emergency.
The new portal that allows companies to prepare and submit information on hazardous mixtures that can be used by poison centres. The portal allows companies to notify several Member States in which they intend to place their products on the market with a single submission. This will reduce companies’ administrative burden and costs when submitting information on hazardous mixtures to appointed bodies in EU Member States and EEA countries.
ECHA is not charging a fee for the use of the portal but some Member States may levy fees to cover their costs. Notifications submitted through the portal will be valid once the relevant Member State is ready to accept them.
Further improvements to the user interface and more functionalities will be implemented in future releases of the portal in July and November 2019.
Source: European Chemicals Agency
