REACH, CLP and how they interact

One of the trickiest things I’ve found with classifying chemicals in the EU and UK is understanding the relationship between CLP and REACH. The pre-GHS EU regime for hazards of chemicals for supply, that is classification, labelling, packaging and safety data sheets were all gathered together into two directives, the Dangerous Substances Directive and Dangerous […]

REACH in the EU: an overview

After last week’s post on CLP and REACH, I thought it might be helpful to go over the requirements of REACH in the EU. REACH compliance in the EU depends on two main facts: These two facts define whether you have REACH registration liabilities for any substances, and whether other REACH duties apply. Of course, […]

Some thoughts on chemicals

I don’t know about you, but I’m in a more reflective mood as we prepare for the Christmas holidays in the UK. First of all, I want to say thank you for your interest in CLP, REACH and assorted chemical regulations, and thank you for continuing to read our articles. Most of our readers work […]

Potential developments in CLP, GHS and REACH for 2020

Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely time over the Christmas period, and have returned to work refreshed and ready to face the challenges which 2020 will inevitably bring us. After my article last week summarising changes in these regulations for 2019 (available to view here), I thought I’d look forward to what […]

Important changes to P280 in 12th ATP to CLP

Extract from Guidance on labelling and packaging in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 Version 4.0 March 2019, (c) ECHA 2019, all rights reserved I’ve recently realised just how important the subtle change is to P Statement P280, which has come about in Revision 7 of GHS, and is due to be fully implemented into CLP […]

UFI position on CLP label clarified

It can be difficult to keep track of everything which comes out of ECHA, and frankly sometimes I wish they had a colour coding system for their updates and newsletters. For example, they often make a big fuss about a proposed change, such as an SVHC going through a particular committee, and then the actual […]

What the Brexit Transition period means for CLP and REACH

Transition Period Timeline (c) Daily Telegraph 2020 Well, here we all are in the famous Transition period of Brexit, where the UK has officially left the EU, but remains fully aligned with all EU laws and regulations, and is effectively considered to still be part of the EU. In other words, it’s Phoney Brexit! The […]

SVHC and WEL updates, January 2020

No sooner have we got into 2020, when first ECHA publish four new SVHCs, see here, and then the HSE here in the UK issue an updated version of EH40: Workplace Exposure Limits, which includes some significant changes to workplace exposure limits in the UK. In fact, I feel a bit like the lady in […]

Is industry really classifying and labelling hazardous mixtures incorrectly 44% of the time?

You may have seen ECHA’s newsletter on 17th December 2019, with the worrying headline “44% of hazardous mixtures are not compliant with classification and labelling obligations” (see here). You can imagine consumers going about thinking that its unsafe to use nearly half of their household chemicals, although luckily this piece of information has not hit the […]

The “Competent Person” under GHS

You may be aware that GHS and CLP both require Safety Data Sheets to be compiled by a “competent person”. But it’s not clear what this actually means. As GHS has been based on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (TDG), it is likely that this requirement has come out of that standard. Under TDG, there […]