8 more chemicals on most harmful list

In mid June, eight more chemicals were formally adopted by the European Chemicals Agency’s Member State Committee as ‘Substances of very high concern’, and ECHA has added them to REACH’s most harmful chemicals list. This list is officially called the Candidate List, as ‘substances of very high concern’ are candidates for becoming subject to the strict ‘Authorisation’ process, where chemicals must have explicit permission for particular uses on the European single market.

The addition of these eight chemicals brings the total number of most harmful chemicals officially identified in the REACH system since 2008 to 38. These chemicals were proposed earlier in the year (see prior article here.

The eight chemicals, their health/environmental effects and the country which proposed and submitted the dossiers are:

Substance name Reason for proposing Country
Trichloroethylene CMR France
Sodium Chromate CMR France
Ammonium Dichromate CMR France
Potassium Dichromate CMR France
Potassium Chromate CMR France
Boric Acid CMR Germany
Disodium Tetraborate CMR Denmark
Tetraboron Disodium CMR Denmark
heptaoxide hydrate

- To see the full ‘candidate list’, go here

- To see documents on the individual chemicals and the responses to comments arising from the public consultation on the chemicals after their initial proposal, written by the Member State that proposed the chemical, go here

- To see more information on the individual substances and their uses, go here

Written on July 2010.



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