ECHA lists substances for evaluation

At its annual forum for exchange of information on enforcement in Helsinki on 19-22 March, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) adopted the updated Community rolling action plan (CoRAP) for substance evaluation. This now lists 100 substances, 24 of them newly allocated, which are to be evaluated under REACH by 19 EU member states in the years 2019-2021.

For the 31 specified for this year, the evaluating authorities will have 12 months – to 19 March 2020 - to carry their work out. Because of this decision and a change since the start of the year to address its evaluation decisions to all registrants with non-compliant dossiers, rather than just lead registrants, ECHA subsequently invited enforcement authorities to prioritise the enforcement of evaluation decisions.

The stated aim of evaluation is “to clarify whether further information is needed to conclude whether a substance poses a risk to people or the environment”. If so, registrants will be asked to provide this information, which is why they are encouraged to coordinate their actions and contact the evaluating member state, and also urged to update their dossiers, especially for uses and exposures. The authorities will assess any concerns and, where relevant, initiate regulatory risk management actions.

Substances are selected for evaluation based on concerns about suspected serious hazard properties. They may be sensitisers, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT), carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) or endocrine disruptors. Wide dispersive worker or consumer use is also considered.

Among other changes, evaluation was brought forward for two substances: triclocarban and bis(4-chlorophenyl) sulphone. For the remaining cases, the evaluation year was postponed to wait for the results on ongoing dossier evaluation processes on these or similar substances, due to limited member state resources or, in 11 cases, because the member state requested their withdrawal for various reasons.

Full details of the substances affected are listed on the ECHA website. The agency added that it plans to evaluate 44 and 25 substances in 2020 and 2012 respectively, though this may be changed when the CoRaP is next updated in March 2020.