Public consultation: 8 ‘most harmful’ chemicals to be prioritised for use-by-authorisation-only?

The European Chemicals Agency has proposed that 8 chemicals from the most harmful/candidate list be placed on the ‘priority list’ for going through REACH’s strict permission procedure, officially called the authorisation process. The European Chemicals Agency Secretariat proposes a draft recommendation of chemicals to the priority list, following which there is a public consultation. This public consultation has begun, and runs until 30 September 2010. Any interested parties can submit comments. This is the second set of priority chemicals to be proposed since REACH began.

This public consultation is important because the authorisation process is REACH’s strictest procedure which control whether and under what conditions chemicals can be used and placed on the market. This consultation will help collect the information and perspectives about how individual chemicals (or groups of chemicals) are treated within the process, including deadlines by which companies must apply for authorization, review periods, and exemptions, etc. As ECHA notes, the ultimate aim of authorisation is that the inherent risks of these concern chemicals are properly controlled and that they are progressively replaced by suitable alternatives.

The final ECHA recommendation for this second set of priority chemicals will be made later this year to the European Commission, which then has to take a final decision, via an EU committee process, in which Member States are consulted. The first ECHA recommendation for 7 priority chemicals was made in June 2009, and has been held up due to disagreements within the Commission, which are now resolved. The final Commission decision about the first priority list is expected around December 2010.

The second set of priority chemicals proposed are:

These chemicals were selected from the first 30 chemicals on the Candidate List (the most recent eight chemicals added to the Candidate List in early June were not included in this prioritization round). These eight substances can all found on the S.I.N.* List, a priority list put forward by the NGO International Chemical Secretariat (ChemSec), in collaboration with leading NGOs in the EU and the US, including the Health and Environment Alliance. The Substitute It Now List 1.1 consists of 356 chemicals that have been identified as Substances of Very High Concern based on the criteria established by REACH.

For more information and to comment in the Public Consultation, see here and here