Non-food legislation – February 2021

EU matters
The EC has presented its Beating Cancer Plan (635 kB). One of the four key action areas is prevention through actions addressing key risk factors such as environmental pollution and hazardous substances.
As of 1 March 2021, manual completeness checks performed by ECHA will be extended to chemical safety reports to ensure they contain all the elements required under REACH. The completeness check of chemical safety reports was originally scheduled to start in April 2020.
ECHA has published a document (267 kB) summarising the achievements of the SVHC 2020 Roadmap. The goal of the roadmap was to identify all relevant, currently known SVHCs and include them on the Candidate List by 2020. The Candidate List now contains 211 substances.
ECHA has announced the start of two Forum enforcement projects. The first will check whether SVHCs placed on the EU market have been granted authorisation. The second is a pilot project focusing on exemptions from the duty to register substances recovered from waste.
A briefing, recently published by EEA, describes key approaches to make chemicals and products safe and sustainable by design, before they enter the market.

Developments in France
FPF reports that the government has sent a draft decree to the EC on the provision of information to identify EDCs in a product. The government has also sent a draft decree to the EC on Decree on the identification of dangerous substances in waste-generating products with a view to imposing measures to inform consumers about their presence.

Developments in Canada and the US
Canada: The government has published a Technical Consultation proposing the grouping of 343 chemicals related to BPA under the Chemicals Management Plan (CMP).
US California: Keller and Heckman reports that the OEHHA has issued proposed amendments to limit the option for providing a shortened version of the Proposition 65 warning on consumer and other products.
US Minnesota: A bill (200 kB) has been introduced that proposes adding PFAS as a hazardous substance under the Environmental Response and Liability Act.

Research on negative effects of GenX and EDCs
FPF reports that the US EPA has published a study (6.34 MB) in Environment International that found GenX to be a developmental toxicant in rats – similar to other PFAS. FPF also reports that HBM4EU has published a study (4 MB) in Reproductive Toxicology that found EDCs in human placenta. The researchers state that their results indicate that the healthy development of fetuses may be negatively affected by exposure to mixtures of these chemicals.

RIVM develops method to analyse the presence of SVHCs in the chain
Information about the composition of materials and products is essential for the safe and high-quality reuse and recycling of materials. RIVM has developed a method (in Dutch, 2.79 MB) with which governments and companies can analyse at which location in the 'chain of production, use, and (waste) processing' SVHCs can be present and where they cause risks. Mineral oil in food packaging is one of the two practical cases that have been worked out in more detail in order to test the framework.
 

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