Wallström increases REACH’s ‘high-concern chemicals’ roster

Date: 03/04/03

By Karen Carstens

MARGOT Wallström has added more substances to a list that would have to be authorised under the proposed system to register, evaluate and authorise chemicals (REACH).

The keynote speaker on Monday (31 March) at a European Voice chemicals policy conference, the Swedish environment commissioner revealed that so-called 'persistent and bioaccumulative substances' would be included in the 'chemicals of very high concern' category.

This means they would have to undergo the authorisation step in the REACH system to register, evaluate and authorise chemicals.

Wallström's announcement put an end to a long-running dispute between her officials and their counterparts in the enterprise directorate headed by Commissioner Erkki Liikanen.

Both have shared responsibilities for hammering out the details of the REACH proposal.

Wallström also unveiled several other key aspects of the package now agreed between the two departments.

"The new policy introduces a radical paradigm shift, which breaks with the past," she said in her address opening the two-day event. "In the future, the chemicals industry will be responsible for generating and providing the necessary information about their own products in line with corporate responsibility. Not - as it is today - the public authorities having to prove that a chemical is hazardous."

The proposals will be circulated to other Commission directorates shortly for consultation before a final meeting of the College to settle any outstanding differences. An online 'stakeholder' consultation to ensure "workability" of the plans is to begin in mid-May before the draft legislation is finally put forward in July.

Industry body Cefic, however, expressed concerns at the conference. "The scope should be limited to what's really necessary," Director-General Alain Perroy said. All intermediates - chemicals used to make other chemicals - and polymers should be exempted, he claimed.

But Wallström insisted that intermediates - bar certain exceptions - would be included.

Concerns about the scope of the REACH proposals were also voiced by other "downstream users" - representatives of manufacturing industries ranging from textiles to computers who need chemicals to make their products. They fear that, depending on how chemicals producers' define the so-called 'intended use' of a chemical under the new system, they would have to conduct their own testing or evaluation procedures.

A substance used in a car tyre, for example, would then become more costly, forcing the carmaker to "either make a worse tyre or jack up the price of the final product", one conference participant said. Downstream users are also worried that certain chemicals produced in small quantities may simply be pulled from the market by companies unwilling to have them tested, leaving them scrambling for fast alternatives or forced to stop making their products.

Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström has added more substances to a list that would have to be authorised under the proposed system to register, evaluate and authorise chemicals.