Checking the checklists

摘要

As governments move to modernise their chemicals legislation to try and catch up with the thousands of chemicals being made, imported, sold and used in their marketplaces, a growing trend is the emergence of regulatory inventories and other lists of chemicals. At the 2013 Helsinki Chemicals Forum in June, regulators, NGOs, industry and other experts discussed each other’s lists, noting that these have different objectives and purposes. ECHA’s Director of Risk Management, Jack de Bruijn, acknowledged that those of us based outside the EU are often confused by the several lists maintained under the REACH Regulation. He explained that there are no longer separate lists of new and existing chemicals under EU law, and that none of the lists assigns priorities for risk assessment because the burden for proving chemicals safety has been shifted to companies to address, before they place their products on the market.