REACH Chemical Regulation Group Offers Advice and Recommendations

The Director's Contact Group (DCG) has issued a report on the "Achievements, Lessons Learned and Recommendations" garnered from its supporting role for last year's first REACH registration deadline.  The DCB was formed to deal with a wide range of issues related to REACH chemical regulation - 28 different issues in all.  And now the DCG has been renewed until the end of September 2013 so that it can address any issues that might arise with the next registration deadline, which is May 30, 2013.

The DCG report gives a summary of its achievements, and presents many of the lessons learned from the experience.  All of this sets the stage for recommendations that hopefully will ease the burden for companies preparing for the 2013 (and 2018) registration deadlines.  An annex of the report gives short summaries of the 28 issues addressed by the group to date.

Issues that are expected to be priority for the next deadline include:

• Organizational issues within SIEFs, the Substance Information Exchange Forums, that had mixed reviews during the first round of registrations,
• Guidance on how to deal with situations in which the companies have merged or spun off units during the registration period (which is especially important for the many small and medium size entities that are expected to be part of the second round),
• Guidance on communication within the supply chain, again a difficult issue for small and medium sized companies with less resources
• Updating of information technology tools like IUCLID, REACH-IT, and guidance documents

One thing that the DCG and ECHA agree on is that companies planning to register chemicals by May 2013 should "Act Now!"  Members say that industry cannot prepare early enough, and many (but not all) companies are heeding that advise. 

The DCG report can be downloaded as a PDF here.

More information on REACH can be found on the ECHA web site.