May 17 – Reach duty of care rules are onerous (EU REACH regulations)

An editorial which discusses EU REACH regulations. A great deal of information is in the article, which concludes:

Reach will have a significant impact on both the chemical industry and the downstream users of chemicals. The larger chemical companies will likely be better equipped to absorb the costs of compliance with Reach. Small firms and specialty chemical manufacturers will face a disproportionate increase in their costs.

Reach also imposes a duty of care upon producers and downstream users of a substance. However, this duty of care consideration extends beyond ‘substances’ to also include ‘preparations’. Therefore it is not only individual “substances”, but ‘preparations’ which may be comprised of many ‘substances’, where a duty of care also exists.

There will be sanctions that will be applied where there is non-compliance with the regulation. These sanctions have not yet been identified but are likely to be at the discretion of the member states.

See Engineer Live! for the full article.