Thursday, August 14, 2008

REACH around

Not to be outdone by the paranoia-inspired, time-wasting Shoggoth that is America's C-TPAT, the Europeans have responded with REACH Regulation No1907/2006. Reach stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of CHemicals.

Now, I need to provide information about substances of Very High Concern*, as well as suggest any substances that are
CMR’s (Carcinogenic, Mutagenic, Toxic for reproduction)
PBT’s ( Persistant, bioaccumulative, toxic)
vPvB (very Persistant or very Bioaccumulative)

Here is a list of said substances, but that is sort of the first draft. It is going to get much longer. Some examples:
Dibutyl phthalate
Cyclododecane
Cobalt dichloride
Diarsenic pentaoxide
So now I guess I'll just contact all of my vendors and ask them if they are using any Cyclododecane or Diarsenic pentaoxide in any of the stuff they sell us. They might try to dodge the question by pointing out that they are already certified for EC Council Directive 2002/95/EC, but I'm not having it. And I don't care if they don't know what Dibutyl phthalate is. I don't know what it is either, but the paperwork still REACHed my desk.





* No shit. That's what they call them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Think of all of the bureaucrats who now get to be employed though! How entrepreneurial of them to claim the whole world as their regulatory arena! JUNKETS! MAN! JUNKETS!

red A

felice said...

Karl,

we had REACH seminars here in UK.
As far as I understand, there is a period now for pre-registration of these substances until late 2009.

If you need any information, you can ask any of my colleagues in Taichung office, guess they also had some seminars there??

felix

Chaon said...

We got tagged by the "Yellow and Black Monster" to do this pre-registration. Problem is, I have no idea what chemicals to register. The only thing I can guess is some component of EVA foam? Anyway, I pre-registered nothing, and I'm hanging this entirely on the importers.