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About REACH, & Guidance

The EU REACH Regulation entered into force on 1 June 2007 . The core aim of this legislation is to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the hazards of chemicals, including metals and their compounds.

REACH places the burden of proof upon industry to:

demonstrate that the effects of their substances on human health and the environment are fully understood,
provide risk management measures to ensure the safe use of substances throughout their life cycle

To achieve this goal the EU requires all manufacturers in Europe and/or importers into Europe of chemicals substances, to register detailed technical dossiers about each substance with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) within certain timeframes.

When is REACH-registration?

Registration must be made within certain timeframes, depending upon the annual tonnage you manufacture in the EU and/or import into the EU.

REACH-registration deadlines for:

High volume tonnage substances (i.e.>1000 tonnes) was 30 November 2010
Medium volume tonnage substances (i.e. 100-999 tonnes) was 31st May 2013
Low volume substances (i.e. <100 tonnes) is by 31st May 2018

Consequences of not REACH-registering?

Non-compliance with REACH-registration by the prescribed deadlines means that it is against the law to continue to manufacture in the EU, and/or import substances into the EU that you have not registered.

What is involved in registering?

In very broad terms, per substance, REACH prescribes an extensive list of human health, environment and physico-chemical endpoints about which it first requires data. Secondly, it requires the data to be used to make risk assessment, and thirdly it requires the provision and use of risk management measures for safe use of each substance throughout its life cycle.

The Molybdenum Consortium (MoCon) of the International Molybdenum Association (IMOA) has prepared the technical content of the REACH-registration dossiers for specified molybdenum substances.

Letters Of Access are available to Non-MoCon Members.

REACH Guidance Documentation

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has developed an extensive REACH Guidance Page to facilitate your implementation of REACH by describing good practice on how to fulfil the numerous obligations. Registration, Data-Sharing, Substance Identity, Intermediates, SDS Compilation, Waste and Recovered Substances are all examples of Guidance Documents that are available in various EU languages.
Likewise, ECHA has developed a set of Guidance Documents that you can download, on topics as diverse as Getting Started with REACH-IT; to Invoicing; to Legal Entity Change: how to submit an Inquiry, or Chemical Safety Report as part of a joint submission; or determine what will be published on the ECHA website from a registration dossier.

Quick guide to finding information on the new Chemical Legislation