Environmental and Regulatory Developments

REACH is a framework for new European Union chemicals legislation, adopted on October 29, 2003 and still being negotiated with interested parties. REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals. The details will take a long time to settle, so some of the issues discussed below may have been overtaken by events by the time this report is read. 

Proposals include the establishment of a European Chemicals Agency in the European Union and the amendment of earlier regulations on persistent organic pollutants. Companies manufacturing or importing more than one tonne per year of chemical substances are invited to assess the risks of the chemicals and to bear the cost of the testing programme. The burden of proof of safety for a chemical will be transferred from the public authorities to the manufactiners. 

There has been concern in the chemicals industry that REACH legislation, and in particular the expense of testing, will make the production and sale of low-volume chemicals uneconomic, and some companies will be unable to continue trading. The legislation would make it impossible for the plastics and additives industries to source some of their raw materials from within the EU. Most of the US chemical industry is opposed to REACH, and one US-based compoimder has suggested that converters may be forced to move out of Europe to control then-costs. Japan has complained that some of the provisions of REACH may contravene World Trade Organisation agreements. 

Some 30,000 chemical substances for which existing information is considered inadequate have been identified. The smaller polymer producers in the Eastern European countries that joined the EU in May 2004 are expected to face an uphill struggle to meet the EU s environmental and social regulations. 

A spokesman for the flame retardant manufacturer Great Lakes Chemicals said by way of illustration that the company had aheady developed an alternative to its banned flame retardant penta-BDE, but could not now justify the extra cost of testing it, so the company will not develop it for sale in Emope. Testing would have cost aroimd 5000 emos/tonne of material, but the selling price would not have been more than 4000 euros/toime. 

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