EU - Control banding of chemicals exposure – Conference presentations now available 11.07.2011
The EU-conference "Perspectives of Control Banding" took place in Dortmund on 21. / 22. June 2011 with more than 50 experts.
Since December 2010 the extended provisions on safety data sheets (acc. to regulation no. 453/2010 from 20 may 2010) in the EU chemicals regulation REACH allows the use of control banding approaches to recommend risk management measures. This is another remarkable milestone in the young history of Control Banding (CB) in Europe, which has started with HSE's COSHH Essentials in 1999. In the last decade the idea of making risk assessment transparent and understandable for SME without specific chemical knowledge by using bands derived from easy available information has spread world-wide, supported by an International Technical Group (ITG) "Control Banding" of WHO and ILO.
This was the first European Workshop organised by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in Germany with support by the ITG following six international (ICBW) and regional control banding workshops in Asia, South and North America since 2001. Taking into account the most popular CB tools in Europe: COSHH Essentials (UK), Stoffenmanager (NL) and EMKG (DE) the conference focused on three main topics:
- Control Banding and REACH
- Scientific Basis of Control Banding and new developments
- Control Banding implementation: communication, training and education.
The conference outlined European contributions to the second 5-years-workplan (2011 - 2016) of the ITG. It was a starting point for new co-operations and collaborations on Control Banding in Europe and beyond.
The programme and presentations of the conference can be downloaded below.
EU-OSHA presentation at the Workshop Control banding - Risk management tools: EU-OSHA's activities and perspective (PDF file, 3 MB) Elke Schneider, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, EU-OSHA
