Environmental group urges US adoption of Reach

04 April 2007 18:30  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The Environmental Defense group issued a report on Wednesday urging US adoption of most requirements of the EU’s new chemicals control programme, saying the European system is likely to become the global standard anyway.

 

In a 140-page report comparing chemical regulatory practices in Canada, the US and the EU, author Richard Denison said most of the best practices he identified in the Reach programme would develop “information sufficient to provide a reasonable assurance of safety for chemicals” that are already in broad commercial use.

 

Denison, senior health programme scientist at the Washington-based environmental advocacy group, said that if it were possible he would like to see a Reach-like approach in the US for evaluating chemicals already in the marketplace.

 

However, he said the 30-year-old US Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) approach to evaluating the environmental safety of new chemicals in many respects provides better government review of substances than Reach does for existing compounds.

 

Denison said conversations he has had with EU officials involved in Reach suggest that while the European programme will indeed require detailed registration information on some 30,000 chemicals and substances now in common use, the EU expects to perform government evaluations of only 50-100 of those registered products annually.

 

“I think Reach needs a significantly enhanced and mandatory government review process for the information that will be coming in” under the registration process, he said.

 

Despite that shortcoming, Denison said his study indicates that a Reach-like system in the US would provide the best means of evaluating the environmental and human health implications of chemicals already in use.

 

“The information aspects and the broad sharing of that information under Reach are enormous steps forward,” Denison said. 

 

“For even if the EU government does not take on the assessment and authorisation task as fast as it should, the information generated in the registration process will be available to everyone - customers, suppliers, retailers, academics, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and other levels of government, including US states,” he said.

 

“All those players have a role now in deciding how the market treats chemicals. This has enormous potential to change the global dynamic,” he said.

 

“Reach certainly has strong potential to become the global standard,” Denison said, “because in many ways it will become the de facto global benchmark for information needed on chemicals.” 

 

Even countries outside the EU, he said, will come to expect the level of chemical product information now demanded by Reach.

 

The full text of Denison’s report, “Not That Innocent; a Comparative Analysis of Canadian, EU and US Policies on Industrial Chemicals,” is available on the Environmental Defense Web site.

By: Joe Kamalick
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