Plastic loophole could undo REACH

A flaw in the drafting of the EU chemicals legislation REACH means it will not work, according to industry lobbyists.

They claim that some safe products would be subject to the same complicated registration rules as hazardous chemicals and they want the REACH proposal changed from the text agreed by ministers last December.

The problem, which the lobbyists say is only now coming to light, is with the import of polymers - typically, a plastic built up from several types of simple molecules (monomers). Under the December common position agreed by the Council of Ministers, an EU company importing polymers would have to register the individual monomers used to build it, even if no trace of them remained in the imported product.

"This provision affects the workability of REACH," Masatoshi Ogura, director of the Japan Chemicals Industry Association (JCIA), told European Voice.

REACH was proposed to manage the risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals in Europe. Ogura said that unless ministers woke up to the polymers problem during the second reading which is about to begin, the new legislation risked contradicting this aim.

"The common position does not reflect a risk-based approach because with these polymers we have no exposure to hazardous chemicals," he said.

The total cost for EU importers is not known, but Ogura estimates it could easily run into the high millions of euros for polymers from Japan alone.

Plastic polymers are used to make hundreds of common articles, from mobile phones and electronic devices to garden furniture.

A European industry insider said it was not only companies outside the EU which would lose business if Europe stopped importing polymers because of the cost and complications. He predicted a large-scale shift to importing finished articles made of polymers, since these do not require registration, leading to a slump in EU manufacturing.

He said industry groups around the world were beginning to realise there was a problem but that time was running out. "The problem could be easily solved at this stage. If nothing is done we risk huge complications further down the line."

Experts explain that polymers fall into two categories: those containing ‘residual’ monomers, which could include traces of hazardous chemicals, and those containing only ‘bound’ mono- mers, in which the chemical transformation has removed all remnants of the original chemical building blocks.

Industry analysts said it would be illogical and unnecessarily burdensome to impose the same registration requirements for bound and residual monomers. Instead they suggested only notifying the nascent EU chemicals agency of the presence of bound monomers - a much quicker and cheaper process than registration.

MEPs last year voted that only residual monomers would require registration. But according to the common position agreed later by the ministers, both residual and trace monomers would have to be registered.

According to Ogura, the polymer question has stayed off the political radar-screen, despite countless industry, green group and government analyses of REACH, because it is so complicated.

"The problem is still not well understood by industry and there has been some confusion in the interpretation of the common position. A lot of people still assume legislation could only apply to residual monomers," he said.

But Justin Wilkes of WWF, the conservation group said that not requiring registration for all monomers in imported polymers would give non-EU producers an unfair advantage.

Polymers made in the EU could only be made from registered monomers. "If you are concerned with European competitiveness, then REACH has to be done on the basis of registering all substances," he explained.

The European Commission said it was unable to comment on the issue.

A flaw in the drafting of the EU chemicals legislation REACH means it will not work, according to industry lobbyists.