REACH

Summary
Are you affected?
What is required?
Current situation
Further information

 

Summary

REACH is an acronym for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Regulations which came into force on 1 June 2007. Their main aim is to protect human health and the environment from the use of chemicals while facilitating their free movement within the EU. To do this, manufacturers and importers into the EU must register their chemical substances. Failure to do so within the prescribed timetable means that the chemicals cannot be used within the EU. The Regulations also then require an evaluation of the risks related to the substances, requires certain dangerous substances to be authorised and restricts the manufacture and import of certain substances into the EU. To ensure consistency across the European Union the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction processes for chemical substances is managed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) located in Helsinki. Phase one – ‘Pre-registration’ – required all manufacturers and importers of more than one tonne per year of chemical substances already on the market to have registered on the ECHA website by 1 December 2008. If you missed that deadline, you CANNOT continue to supply those substances and must then go through full registration. The Regulations are enforced by HSE in the UK. Approximately 1.6m substances were registered across the EU by the deadline, slightly more than the estimated 30-50,000.

ECHA have now posted a toolkit that helps registered companies meet their information requirements. (12 Oct 2010)

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Are you affected?

REACH applies to substances or preparations that when used, can be potentially harmful through their release. They do not apply to waste although they do apply to by products of a waste treatment process that are then put into use.

Any business that manufactures or imports chemical substances or preparations to place them onto the EU market must register. If your business therefore receives substances and mixes them to create a new substance, they should register the substance although the original substance manufacturers/importers should also be registered.

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What is required?

To be honest, REACH is a nightmare and there appears to be no simple idiot’s guide that tells you what substances are actually covered. For instance, if you buy toys from the Far East, should the chemicals included in them be registered? The answer, I believe, is ‘no’ as they come under other regulations and there is no release that can harm human health or the environment, but further clarification on this will be obtained. At this stage, the main problem is companies that have missed the 1 December deadline. At a recent conference at which ECHA and HSE were represented, there was no solution put forward for those that had missed the deadline other than ‘they cannot put their products on the market if they contain un-preregistered substances’. However, whilst the pre-registration facility on ECHA’s website is now closed. Companies can still late pre-register if they are placing products onto the market for the first time. It was therefore suggested that companies may wish to withdraw a product notionally and then re-place it onto the market. If you believe you may be obligated in some way, the best policy is to contact the competent authority – in the UK, this is HSE. However, there are many other organisations including those shown below that provide advice and support – although often at a price!

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Current situation

1.6m substances have been registered, clearly many them in duplicate by down stream businesses applying belt and braces. These now have to be assessed by ECHA prior to the next deadline:

30 November 2010 – full registration for those placing >1000 tpa onto the EU market
30 May 2013 – full registration for 100 – 1000 tonnes
30 May 2018 – full registration for 1 – 100 tonnes

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Further information

HSE
HSE Helpline 0845 345 0055 although they have been told not to answer questions and to get people to email with queries to ukreachca@hse.gsi.gov.uk

ECHA

ReachReady (Chemical Industries Association website for Reach) FAQs

Chemical Watch – excellent news updates

Lancaster University REACH Certificate of Competence Courses

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