Advice for producers of chemicals
REACH is a new European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use (EC 1907/2006). It deals with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances. The new law entered into force on 1 June 2007.
The REACH Regulation gives greater responsibility to industry to manage the risks from chemicals and to provide safety information on substances. Manufacturers and importers will be required to gather information on the properties of their chemical substances, which will allow their safe handling, and to register the information in a central database run by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)
in Helsinki. REACH guidance documents provide supplementary information to the legal text. To assist with chemical data management and registration submission under REACH, two software tools will be available: REACH-IT and IUCLID5.
The Agency helpdesk assists companies with questions relating to their registrations of chemical substances. Each Member State provides REACH helpdesk services to all interested parties in their country.
REACH will also require companies who use chemicals to pass on information to producers of chemicals or the ECHA.
