ECHA

The REACH Regulation aims to improve understanding on the chemicals used in Europe by making information available on their impact and safe use. So far, the REACH database contains information on more than 8 000 chemicals on the EU market from over 33 000 registration dossiers. The amount of data has grown enormously compared to the past. How is ECHA making the best use of this information? ECHA Newsletter finds out.

It has been said that prior to REACH, for over 85% of the chemicals produced in high volumes basic information was unavailable. The introduction of REACH has made a huge improvement: there is now a lot of information available. "To have this data is the first great step of REACH," says Mike Rasenberg, ECHA's Head of Unit for Computational Assessment.

Mike Rasenberg.

 

Improve you dossier - use the Dossier Quality Assistant   The Dossier Quality Assistant, released in February 2013, helps industry to prepare high quality dossiers. The tool enables registrants to voluntarily check certain areas of the dossiers before submitting them. "Registrants can proactively improve their dossiers before our checks and screenings, by detecting potential inconsistencies themselves," says Mike Rasenberg.     Erwin Annys of Cefic. The European Chemical Industry Council's (Cefic) Director Erwin Annys supports the tool. "We are grateful to have a tool which checks inconsistencies at an early stage. IUCLID has over 9 000 fields and it is easy to put in contradictory information there by mistake. This will help to harmonise the IUCLID dossier," Mr Annys says.   The downside for industry is that the tool creates a lot of error messages. "We would have hoped that this was introduced at a later stage. At the moment the tool is, unfortunately, seen as an additional burden for the preparations for 2013," says Mr Annys.   Further information:   New tool to support registrants in improving dossier quality now available, News alert 11 February 2013

 

Interview by Hanna-Kaisa Torkkeli