INSIGHT: North America debuts new controls plan

23 August 2007 13:43  [Source: ICIS news]

By Joe Kamalick

 

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--A new tripartite agreement by the US, Mexico and Canada to manage chemicals in broad commercial use may emerge as the North American counterpart to the EU’s controversial Reach programme.

 

Broadly welcomed by the US process industry, the new three-nation framework for regulating chemicals is seen by some as a global bulwark against Reach, establishing a risk-based approach to chemicals management that may beat the European plan as a model that emerging economies will prefer. 

 

The EU programme for the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (Reach) came into force on 1 June this year. It requires that chemicals produced or imported in the EU in excess of 1 tonne - perhaps as many as 30,000 substances - must each be registered, tested and then authorised for commercial use by a new European chemicals agency.

 

Many in the US chemicals industry have worried that Reach ultimately could have become the de facto global standard for chemicals management, forcing US and other non-European producers to conform to Reach requirements.

 

Now, however, some among the US chemicals industry contend that the new North American plan may sweep past Reach to prominence among developing nations that want adequate environmental controls but without choking chemicals innovation and industry in general.

 

The North American programme was announced by Presidents George Bush and Felipe Calderon with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Tuesday at their summit meeting in Montebello, Quebec.

 

The unnamed framework in general terms is designed to characterise, test and manage more than 9,000 moderate-volume chemicals that are in general commercial use.

 

Moderate-volume chemicals are those manufactured or imported in quantities above 25,000 pounds (11.3 tonnes) annually.

 

The Montebello agreement laid out broad terms of the plan, but details are to be worked out in a series of meetings that will begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

 

In part of the arrangements already spelled out, by 2012 the US is to complete risk characterisations on the 9,000 chemicals.

 

That work, which an official with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said will likely be funded within EPA’s annual budgets, will build on the nine-year-old EPA and chemicals industry testing programme for high production volume (HPV) chemicals.

 

The HPV programme has nearly completed risk profiles for human health and the environment on about 2,800 chemicals that are produced or imported in the US in quantities of 1m pounds/year (454 tonnes/year).

 

The tripartite agreement also will draw on Canada’s experience with its domestic substances list evaluation programme, which uses predictive modelling and use exposure to categorise and review chemicals on a tiered, risk-based approach.

 

Under the Montebello agreement, by 2020 the three nations are to have created and updated chemical inventories in each country and co-ordinate their management in keeping with each nation’s laws and international agreements.

 

Jack Gerard, president of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), said the new agreement “will provide benefits across North America by supporting competitiveness and innovation while addressing concerns about chemical safety”.

 

The programme was welcomed by the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA), whose 300 member firms are major producers of thousands of specialty and batch chemicals that will be a principal focus of the new plan.

 

“This is a significant step forward to continue the innovation of new and safer chemicals in North America,” said SOCMA president Joe Acker.

 

“We strongly support a system that begins with a screening-level look at chemicals and focuses on where more refined studies may be needed, rather than just testing everything for the sake of data collection,” Acker said.

 

The deal was also hailed by the Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) along with the Canadian Consumer Specialty Products Association (CCSPA). SDA president Ernie Rosenberg said the plan provides “a credible chemical management system harmonised with Canada and Mexico, to give the public confidence that our products are safe to use”.

 

Jim Cooper, SOCMA’s government relations senior manager, contrasts the tripartite agreement with Reach, saying the North American plan “takes a truly tiered, targeted and risk-based approach compared with Reach's test-everything approach.

 

Cooper and others contend that Reach will in practice place huge barriers in the path of chemicals innovation in Europe by making market entry for new chemicals extremely complex and costly.

 

He argues that Reach will further hamper new product development in Europe, an area already slowed by previous new-molecule regulations that remain unchanged under Reach.

 

“Europe has generated less than 2,000 new molecules in the last 10 years,” Cooper said.  “Over the same period the US has produced some 1,200-1,500 new molecules each year.”

 

SOCMA, ACC, SDA and other trade groups all said that the new North American programme will allow new product innovation to prosper.

 

“All the innovation in chemicals is going to take place everywhere but in Europe,” Cooper predicts.

 

As a consequence of what is seen as Reach's smothering effect on innovation and the North American plan’s open approach to new products, Cooper also predicts that the tripartite deal ultimately will push Reach aside in the global marketplace for chemicals management and production.

 

“We think that those countries that look to this programme instead of Reach will be much better off economically and will still have a system that is protective of their environments,” Cooper said.

 

An EPA official said no date or venue has yet been set for the fourth-quarter three-nation conference that is to flesh out provisions of the Montebello agreement.

By: Joe Kamalick
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