Non-food legislation – November 2022

Hazardous substances – rules and regulations in the EU
In its work programme for 2023, the EC indicates that the revision of REACH will be pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2023.
Germany has submitted the REACH Annex XV restriction proposal on BPA. It was originally going to be submitted on 8 April 2022 but that was postponed to 7 October 2022.
A call for evidence on PVC and its additives has been opened. With this call, ECHA strives to obtain an understanding on the use volumes at the EU level per sector and for as many end-uses as feasible. The call closes 6 January 2023.
The Council has formally adopted a regulation (376 kB) to reduce limit values for the presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in waste.
ECHA reports on a pilot project (1.4 MB) in which inspectors found that one in four substances recovered from waste was non-compliant with REACH.
The EC has published a Strategic Research and Innovation Plan SRIP (1.32 MB) to accelerate the shift to safe and sustainable chemicals and materials. The SRIP highlights crucial research and innovation needs for this transition.
In a recent manifesto, a number of civil society organisations urge the Member States and the EC to ban all PFAS in consumer products by 2025 and to have a complete ban by 2030.

Hazardous substances – rules and regulations in the US
Earthjustice has filed a petition (8.22 MB) with the EPA on behalf of a coalition of organisations, urging the agency to revoke the approval and order manufacturers to take off the market 600 PFAS - about half of the PFAS in commerce.
Two Senators have introduced a package of bills aimed at protecting New Jersey residents from PFAS. The bills include S3177, the “Protecting Against Forever Chemicals Act”. Under the bill, the sale of certain products containing intentionally added PFAS would be prohibited and greater transparency in the labeling of certain products containing those substances would be required.

Research
According to researchers at Penn State, PFAS can enter wastewater treatment plants from both household and industrial sources. When treated wastewater is used for irrigation activities in agricultural fields, PFAS can be taken up by crops and may enter the food chain when these crops are fed to livestock. An article (1.65 MB) about the research is published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.
In a paper (1.01 MB) published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a team of researchers at Mount Sinai describe a new tool for estimating people’s total exposure to mixtures of PFAS chemicals. The PFAS burden calculator takes into account patterns of exposure to many chemicals within the PFAS family, and not just individual chemical concentrations which current methods are focused on.
A University of Sassari study (2.05 MB) published in Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis shows the toxic effect of BPA, BPF and BPS on human blood cells.
In a study, researchers from the University of Luxembourg, along with others including members of FPF, describe the creation, implementation, current state and outlook of NORMAN-SLE. NORMAN-SLE is a data resource combining suspect lists on chemicals expected to occur in the environment. The study (2.21 MB) is published in Environmental Sciences Europe.
 

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