An EU agency on Wednesday warned that the chemicals industry has yet to register thousands of substances two weeks before the bloc's deadline which aims to boost safety regulations. The Helsinki-based European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) said it had so far received some 20,000 of an estimated 30,000 substance registrations from companies since the EU began to implement its law on chemicals, REACH, in 2008.
The law was adopted to protect human health and the environment from harmful chemicals but also to shift the safety evaluation burden from authorities to companies. Christel Musset, head of registrations at ECHA, told AFP she was expecting registrations to hit "a peak in the remaining two weeks," adding it was difficult to give an exact estimate on how many of them were still missing.
Musset said the final count was likely to be significantly lower than the agency's original estimation of 30,000 different substances as the registration process has forced many companies in the industry to re-evaluate and rationalise their use of substances.
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