At the start of June, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) began the task of substantively administering what has been described by EU Commission officials as the EU’s most complex and complicated piece of legislation to date. REACH, the Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals, came into force a year ago and will require the scrutiny of some 30,000 of the more than 100,000 chemical substances currently on the EU market.
Replacing around 40 pieces of existing legislation, REACH requires producers and other users of chemicals to register, and potentially test, substances manufactured in or imported into the EU in quantities greater than one tonne per annum. Registration with ECHA is also required for chemical substances in certain ‘articles’, where the chemical substances in those articles are intended to be released during normal conditions of use. There are, however, some substances that are exempt from REACH, such as those that are naturally occurring and which are thought to have low hazard properties (such as water) and those which have existing targeted EU regulatory controls (such as waste). As part of the general ‘no data, no market’ rule, failure to register substances subject to REACH with ECHA will result in their continued manufacture or import becoming unlawful.
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