Helsinki - ECHA's Evaluation Report for 2012 shows that a large part of the registration dossiers it has examined for REACH - the EU's regulation on Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals - still raise quality and hence compliance concerns.
ECHA said it "strongly encourages registrants, in particular if they are preparing registration dossiers for the second REACH registration deadline, to read the recommendations of the report and act accordingly."
Last year was a crucial year for evaluating REACH registration dossiers and this evaluation report of 27 Feb 2013 presents details on the Agency's evaluation activities and their respective output.
During 2012, ECHA examined all the testing proposals received for the first REACH registration deadline in 2010, and adopted 171 decisions on testing proposals, and sent 364 draft decisions to registrants.
In 2012, ECHA also launched a new strategy for selecting dossiers for compliance check that may contain typical shortcomings. This approach complements the traditional compliance check, where dossiers are manually selected for examination.
ECHA said this new approach "increases the chances of finding and addressing information gaps in all registration dossiers."
The Agency concluded 354 compliance checks during 2012, but in only a third of these cases found it did not need further information.
Action focused last year on substance identity decisions triggered by the examined testing proposals to which registrants had not or insufficiently responded. In 14 cases, ECHA requested enforcement action on those decisions and had to suspend the associated testing proposal examinations.
"I need to remind registrants that registration under REACH is not just a paper exercise and that high quality data is not an end in itself. The purpose of describing a substance clearly and assessing potential hazards and exposure with scientific rigour is to ensure that the risks are properly identified and controlled in order to protect workers and the public at large," stressed ECHA's executive director Geert Dancet.
The report lists the most common shortcomings found in the dossiers and gives specific recommendations for registrants concerning the following five topics:
* Identifying your substance.
* Identifying the test material.
* Making full use of all relevant information.
* Providing clear use and exposure information.
* Making use of ECHA support.
