SUNIVO REACH Newsletter(6)

ISSUE 6-7th April 2009

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) inaugurated its new conference centre on Friday 3 April. In the event, the European Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström called for a new high level UN panel to tackle the risks from chemicals.

REACH is based on the principle that industry should manufacture, import or use substances or place them on the market in a way that human health and the environment are not adversely affected. The chemicals safety assessment (CSA) is the instrument to:

● Assess the intrinsic hazards of substances including determining the hazard classification, further characterizing hazards, including where possible derivation of no-effect-levels (Derived No-effect-Levels for human health, Predicted No-Effect-Concentrations for environment), and assessing properties relating to persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity (PBT). This includes generation of new information if needed.

In addition, when the substance is classified as dangerous or assessed to have PBT or vPvB3 properties:

● Assess the emission/exposure of man and environment resulting from manufacture and uses throughout the life cycle of the substance. This includes the generation of sufficiently detailed information on uses, use conditions and emissions/exposures of the substance.

● Characterize risks following such emission/exposure.

● And ultimately identify and document the conditions of manufacture and use which are needed for controlling the risks to human health and the environment. This includes operational conditions (OC) and risk management measures (RMM). In REACH this set of information is called exposure scenario (ES).

The goal of the assessment is not to establish whether or not there is a risk, but to identify and describe the conditions under which the risks are controlled. Risk are regarded controlled when the estimated exposure levels do not exceed the predicted no effect levels (DNEL or PNEC).

SUNIVO Recommendation: Control of risk includes operational conditions such as the duration and frequency of use, the amount or concentration of a substance in an activity, or the process temperature. It also includes the necessary risk management measures, such as: e.g. local exhaust ventilation, wearing certain types of gloves, application of general or particular waste water and exhaust gas treatment.

Sources: European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)

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