REACH

New chemical legislation, commonly known as "REACH", has been in force since 1st June, 2007.

REACH is an acronym standing for the “Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals”.

The overall aim of REACH is to improve the protection of human health and the environment whilst maintaining the competitiveness and enhancing the innovative capability of the EU chemicals industry.

 This legislation transfers the responsibility for safety in the handling of chemicals to the chemicals industry. It is now up to the industry to ensure that every single substance is tested, and that all safety data regarding its use are publicly available. The European Commission has estimated that about 30,000 existing substances will be registered by the chemical industry over the next 11 years. 

Product communication requirements

REACH pays particular attention to seeing that information about the safe use of products containing chemicals reaches all parties concerned. Thu, manufacturers, importers and downstream users are obliged to provide detailed information to their customers and consumers about safe handling.

Registration

The cornerstone of REACH is registration. For all substances manufactured on their own, or imported on their own or occurring in preparations in quantities of 1 tonne or more per year, manufacturers and importers must prepare a registration dossier to be then submitted to the European Chemicals Agency. This dossier must include data on the hazardous properties of the substance in question, its uses, waste generated and, for amounts above 10 tonnes per year, a risk assessment (Chemical Safety Report) of the substance, covering each different type of use. It is the industry’s task to gather the requisite information or - if it is not available - to carry out tests necessary to define such information. The actual data included in a dossier and the deadline for submitting it for registration will depend on the hazardous properties of a substance and the amount to be manufactured or imported by a company.

The deadlines are as follows:

Only by pre-registering will a company be allowed to benefit from the deadlines detailed above. This means that identification information and tonnage thresholds of manufactured or imported substances have to be submitted in the 12-18 month period after legislation came into force. Failure to fulfil this requirement will mean that registration obligations will start in June, 2008.

Evaluation

During the Evaluation process, the European Chemicals Agency may check the compliance of any dossier submitted for registration of a substance. Thereafter, for substances of very high concern, a more detailed check of likely risks to human health and the environment is to be carried out by the competent authorities of EU Member States.

Authorisation

As a third step, use-specific authorisation will be required for chemicals that, if handled improperly during their manufacture or use, present high risk. (Under the legislation such substances of very high concern include those which could cause cancer, mutations or reproductive problems, or accumulate in human bodies or the environment). Authorisation will only be granted to companies that can demonstrate either that potential risk can be adequately controlled or that the social and economic benefits of a substance outweigh such risk in cases where no suitable alternative substances or technologies are to be found. This use-specific authorisation is a major step towards ensuring environmental protection since it is expected to encourage substitution of substances of very high concern by safer alternatives, thereby replacing chemicals which cause damage to the environment or human beings.

Restrictions

In addition, whereas previous restrictions still remained in place after REACH came into force, due to increasing amounts of information on potentially harmful substances, the scope of restricted substances will probably broaden. 

Implementation in MOL Group

Fundamental MOL Group principles, its commitment to product stewardship and its basic understanding of the health, safety and environmental aspects of a product throughout its entire life cycle, are all in line with REACH’s goal of improving the protection of health and the environment, in every aspect. Implementation of REACH legislation in Slovnaft is closely harmonised with other member companies of MOL Group and is managed by the REACH project team on Group level.

• MOL Group launched preparations for the new legislation at the beginning of 2006, coordinated by its HSE (Health, Safety & Environment Protection) organisation. Its main tasks were: Impact assessment & opportunity identification; searching for alternative substances; communication with all stakeholders concerned.
• We identified all MOL Group substances falling within the scope of REACH, and assembled all test data available across MOL Group.
• We communicate with our customers and supplier in respect of compliance with REACH legislation.
• In the preparatory work for REACH, we received major support from Concawe, the oil companies’ European association for environment, health and safety and from Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council.   
• Communication with the Helsinki European Chemicals Agency will be supported by an information system to be developed on the request of the European Commission. MOL Group has already begun development of the related company-level information system.

For further information about REACH on the internet, please access:

www.mol.hu/
www.molgroup.hu

European Chemicals Agency: http://echa.europa.eu/
European Chemicals Bureau : http://ecb.jrc.it/REACH/

...or e-mail: reachit@mol.hu