An Overview of the Chemical Safety Report under REACH and its Impact on Global Companies

摘要

As of June 1st, 2007, a new European Regulation came into force called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals). All producers and importers of chemical substances within the European Economic Area (EEA) need to follow this legislation. A main document of the registration is the Chemical Safety Report (CSR). This document contains the substance identity and physical-chemical properties (chapter 1) , manufacturing and use information (chapter 2) , classification and labelling (chapter 3), hazard assessment (chapter4 8) , exposure assessment (chapter 9) and risk characterisation (chapter 10). Cooperation of all producers and importers of a substance is needed to create these CSRs. The exposure assessment is based on a new system using use descriptors like process category (PROC) , environmental release category (ERC) , etc. Each of these categories will have default factors assigned to it which will be used to calculate the risk. The risk characterisation is normally based on existing and proposed applicable tools or the newly developed tools by European Chemical Agency (ECHA). Only uses that are safe will be allowed on the European market. The main purpose of this paper is to give a brief overview of the CSR and how European companies are working on it and how it could affect other regions.