European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) Meets Deadline for Chemical Dossier Completeness Checks

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has reported that it has met its statutory obligation to finish "completeness checks" on chemical dossiers submitted for REACH registration.  REACH required ECHA to complete these reviews within three months following the deadline, which for the first group was November 30, 2010.  The completeness check requirement applies only to registrations for phase-in substances submitted in the last two months before the first registration deadline.  A total of 15,366 dossiers were submitted during that two month period.  According to ECHA:

Registration numbers have been granted for 20 175 of the 20 723 dossiers that were submitted by the first registration deadline, resulting in a total of 3 483 phase-in substances being registered under REACH. Dissemination of information from these dossiers has been accelerated.

The completeness check is only to "check that all required elements have been provided," i.e., that some data are there.  Much of this check is done automatically and registrants can pre-check their dossiers using a Technical Completeness Check (TCC) tool made available to all via the ECHA web site.  ECHA then repeats the TCC upon receipt and also may check other business rules.  This completeness check is different from a compliance check, which involves ECHA staff actually reviewing the substance of the data submitted.

Information about the chemicals registered and access to dossiers once they have been disseminated can be found here.