Reach spreads to US states, seen as tech threat

08 March 2007 19:30  [Source: ICIS news]

BALTIMORE, Maryland (ICIS news)--US chemical industry leaders said on Thursday that the European Union’s (EU) new chemicals management plan is migrating to US state legislatures and warned that it will retard new product development and technology.

 

Jack Gerard, president of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), told an industry regulatory conference that elements of the EU’s newly approved programme for registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (Reach) appeared in nearly 80 state legislative proposals last year. Many more are expected this year, he said.

 

“We anticipate that a number of US state legislatures will consider Reach-like measures this year as well,” Gerard said, noting that “last year we had to deal with more than 78 Reach-like proposals across the country.”

 

Of the 78 Reach-like proposals introduced in state legislatures last year, he said, only a few became law and those were in final forms that do not pose a serious threat to US industry.

 

With final EU approval of Reach in December last year, Gerard said he expects the number of Reach-like state legislative initiatives to exceed 150 this year. “Some state legislators are already convinced that Reach is a better regulatory system, even though it remains untested and unproven,” Gerard said.

 

“Our industry has a tough job ahead of it” in dealing with the anticipated spread of local legislation mimicking Reach, he said.

 

Speaking to some 350 industry executives at the GlobalChem regulatory conference, Gerard said Reach fails to account for how the industry operates, ignores science and imposes high costs on industry, its customers and consumers and on governments that will implement it.

 

European and global economies will suffer as a result, he said.  “We believe that investments in new products and new technology will decrease as company resources are more and more spent on Reach compliance,” he said.  “This will not benefit Europe or the economies that have previously looked to Europe for trade and development.”

 

Jim Cooper, senior manager for government relations at the Synthetic Organic Chemicals Manufacturing Association (Socma) said Reach likely will further retard chemicals innovation in Europe. He said the US chemicals management system, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which he said uses a risk-based approach to chemicals management versus the precautionary principle underlying Reach, has not inhibited industry innovation.

 

Cooper said that in the past ten years the US chemicals industry has generated about 1,200-1,500 new molecules annually compared with something less than 2,000 new molecules generated in Europe during the entire ten-year period.

 

Socma and ACC are cosponsors of the GlobalChem conference. The three-day conference concludes on Friday.

By: Joe Kamalick
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