REACH: 6 months before it bites

Abstract

Time was. Time was that trade in chemicals, unless agreed to be dangerous drugs, flammable hydrocarbons or explosives was a fairly free-and-easy business. If there was no immediate risk, interference from official sources was minimal. But time is now and the authorities in the European Union are setting in place one of the most ambitious and far-reaching pieces of environmental legislation dealing with chemicals ever conceived. The Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) regulations formally came into force last June and their effects will start to be felt from June this year. After that, companies that manufacture, import, sell and use chemical substances, under a definition so broad that even metals used safely for hundreds of years are caught in the dragnet, are all responsible in some measure for demonstrating that usage and disposal are safe. Of course, some are more responsible than others. Although it was originally written for organic chemicals, the scope of REACH covers metals and alloys. It is fiendishly complicated, and its most immediate effect is to place on manufacturers and importers of PM materials the burden of assembling the Registration Dossiers that lie at the heart of the legislation. Irrespective of whether or not a chemical has been a problem in the past, the Dossier must demonstrate that its intrinsic hazards have been quantified, and measures to control human and environmental exposure have been made clear right down the supply chain. Bad dream? Bureaucratic nightmare? Without care on the part of the PM community, it could be both, says the European Powder Metallurgy Association's technical director, Olivier Coube