Belgium: Chemicals Cefic, ECHA, EU Member States Collaborate to Identify Plastic Additives in EU

Together, the EU representatives have come up with a comprehensive inventory of plastic additives used in the region. This move is expected to further improve the safety of chemicals.

Brussels/Belgium – The comprehensive inventory of all plastic additives used to date in the EU, published recently by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), is an important step towards better risk assessment of these substances under Reach and CLP. Cefic and its members worked alongside ECHA, the plastics value chain represented by Plastics Europe and European Plastics Converters, academics and EU member state representatives for two years to screen some 1,000 substances. Together they identified the substances that are actually used as plastic additives in the EU and validated data on their intrinsic properties.

The data provided by the industry helped ECHA and a team of researchers develop a model to calculate the release potential of each substance into the environment.

Regulators in EU member states will be able to use this inventory as a starting point to decide which substances should be assessed as a matter of priority. The information provided in this inventory will need to be combined with the hazard characteristics of each substance for a full risk assessment.

Companies will be able to use the inventory to further refine the data about uses and exposure potential in their Reach registration dossiers. Cefic and Plastics Europe members will communicate the inventory to their supply chain to make sure the downstream industries have the right information about the uses of each substance and its properties.

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