Skip to main content

First non-animal allergy testing strategy approved

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) has approved the world’s first toxicology testing strategy without animal testing. This can now be used to test for skin sensitisation and any products that pass can be placed on the market.

The strategy, which consists of three ‘alternative’ methods, was jointly developed and validated over ten years by BASF and Givaudan, in partnership with various companies and scientific institutions, notably IIVS. It is claimed to have better predictivity for human allergy risks than traditional animal testing.

CEFIC: Increase in non-compliant article imports

According to an analysis by CEFIC of data reported through the EU’s Safety Gate, 2020 saw a steep increase in imports of hand sanitisers that were not compliant with the EU chemicals safety rules. These were either not marked as flammable or containing methanol, as required by EU Classification & Labelling rules, or had insufficient ethanol to kill viruses, as required by the Biocides Regulation, CEFIC noted.

Climate recommendations from ACC

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has issued a set of policy recommendations, which, it says could “enable dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and help the administration to achieve its climate goals. Specifically, it called on Congress to enact legislation to

1. Increase government investment and scientific resources to develop and deploy low emission technologies in the manufacturing sector

2. Adopt transparent, predictable, technology- and revenue-neutral, market-based, economy-wide carbon price signals; and

Chemours announces net zero goals

Chemours has announced plans to achieve a 60% absolute reduction of operations-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. It warned, however, that achieving this “will require significant collaboration in both the public and private sectors to deliver technological innovation and government policies that enable and incentivise the transition to a greener economy”.

ECHA proposes seven more for authorisation

ECHA has prioritised seven substances of very high concern (SVHCs) from the Candidate List and recommended that the European Commission add them to Authorisation List under REACH. All were chosen because they are hazardous, produced in high volumes and widely used, the agency said. This is the tenth such recommendation.

Among them are three siloxanes, which are produced at volumes of up to 1,000 or up to 10,000 tonnes/year. All are deemed to be harmful for the environment because they are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic and/or very persistent and very bioaccumulative:

Feature article - Advances in clean hydrogen multiply

We sum up the latest developments in one of the industry's hottest fields

There have been multiple recent announcements across the world about investments in cleaner forms of hydrogen. These mainly refer to ‘green hydrogen’ produced by electrolysis, though also ‘blue hydrogen’, which is made from natural gas in a reforming process, in which CO2 emissions are captured for storage.

Subscribe to Regulation