REACH-IT update scheduled for 11 July 2012

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has announced that it will upgrade REACH-IT, the user interface needed to submit chemical dossiers for the REACH registration program.  The upgrade will occur on July 11, 2012. To prepare for the changeover, REACH-IT will be inaccessible from Friday 6 July 2012 at 14.00 hrs (Eastern European Time) until 11 July 2012 at 9.00 hrs, in order for ECHA to install the new version of the software and to migrate the data from the present to the new version of REACH-IT.

In addition to REACH-IT, ECHA has also recently released an updated IUCLID, now version 5.4.  IUCLID 5.4 must be used for all dossiers submitted beginning July 11th.  And not to be left out, ECHA has also released a new version of Chesar, the exposure and risk assessment tool needed to complete the analysis of risk. Various plug-ins to the IUCLID software, e.g., Technical Completeness Check, Fee Calculation, Dissemination, and CSR, have also all been upgraded and will be available as the release of the new REACH-IT.

More information can be found on the ECHA site.

Chesar 2.0 released and strongly recommended by ECHA for REACH

Announced by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA):

ECHA launches a new generation of its Chemical Safety Assessment and Reporting Tool to further harmonise and improve information on the safe use of chemicals.

Helsinki, 20 June 2012 – Version 2.0 of Chesar is now available and can be downloaded from the revised Chesar website. ECHA has invested in the redesign of the IT technology of Chesar in order to enhance its stability and make it a better platform for further developments as part of the long term strategy for Chesar. Other improvements include: a redesigned user interface, more transparency in determining the scope of the required exposure assessment, a simplified risk characterisation and an updated version of the Targeted Risk Assessment (TRA) developed by ECETOC. The possibilities to import and export complete chemical safety assessments (CSAs) or CSA building blocks have also been extended.

With Chesar industry organisations can make available generic exposure assessments for the conditions of use in their sector. Single registrants may then import and use this information as a starting point for their own substance specific assessment. Using Chesar will contribute to efficiency and harmonisation in carrying out CSAs. Thus, ECHA strongly recommends (potential) registrants to systematically use Chesar for making chemical safety reports and exposure scenarios.

Today's release of Chesar 2.0 includes the functionalities for carrying out CSAs based on a IUCLID 5.4 dataset and to generate chapters 9 and 10 of the chemical safety report (CSR), with one exception: exposure estimations for consumer uses is not yet included in the current release, but will be included in version 2.1.

The full press release and more information are available here.