REACH

Overview

The European Commission put proposals forward in 2003 to develop a system of registration for chemicals which is known as Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals - REACH. The two most important aims are to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the hazards of chemicals and to enhance the competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry!

Under REACH, the burden of proof for demonstrating the safe use of chemicals will be transferred from Member States to industry to ensure that risks to human health and environment are avoided or adequately controlled. This regulation will replace over 40 existing legal acts. Enterprises that manufacture or import more than one tonne of a chemical substance per year will be required to register the chemical in a central database. This database is operated by the EU Chemicals Agency (ECHA) which is based in Helsinki, Finland. A dossier will have to be submitted containing information on properties, uses and safe ways of handling the chemical being registered. This uses proprietary software called IUCLID. This affects about 30,000 differing producers involving some 100,000 chemical substances.

Downstream Users - that is people who buy coal fired power station products

REACH is complex, but it is only the producers and importers of substances that have to take action at this stage, by pre-registering these substances with ECHA between 1 June 2008 and 30 November 2008 (inc). So called downstream users, e.g. the users of coal fired power station ash products do NOT need to pre-register or register, however, they do need to ensure that the producer or importer of their substances is aware of the nature of the application the product is being put to.

There is a list of applications that the industry is aware of below. Downstream users are advised to contact their suppliers of substances, e.g. fly ash, furnace bottom ash, cenospheres, etc in our case and confirm that that the supplier (or importer) intends to register the substance including the particular application(s) the user in putting these substances to. If a supplier ultimately does not know of a particular application and/or fails to register it within the registration dossier, the use will eventually become illegal.

Applications for ash products

The following button opens a list are those applications we are aware of and intend to register at the appropriate time. If you have further applications that are not included please contact us with that use and we will ensure that this is included within the work of the appropriate

A typical Safety Chemical Datasheet has been prepared covering PFA and FBA based on the requirements for REACH, see UKQAA Datasheet No.9, however the UKQAA is not a supplier but a trade association and it is the responsibility of the substance supplier to supply the user with such information.

REACH Documents

There are hundreds of documents available about REACH, from both EU official web sites to companies specialising in REACH registration. The following is a list of web links to various REACH information pages;

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Authorisation_and_Restriction_of_Chemicals - Overview of REACH on Wikipedia
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/index_en.htm - The home page of the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/about_reach_en.htm - an introduction to REACH on the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/guidance_en.htm - a list of Guidance documents on the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/guidance2_en.htm - Basic guidance documents - in a nutshell on the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/guidance3_en.htm - a list of guidance Factsheets on the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/formats_en.htm - the format of Chemical Safety Reports on the ECHA web site
• http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/legislation_en.htm - the legislation that introduced REACH
• http://iuclid.eu/ - the IUCLID software web site, used to submit data for REACH
• http://iuclid.eu/index.php?fuseaction=home.inquiry - the IUCLID dossier preliminary check tool
• http://www.hse.gov.uk/reach/index.htm - The UK Health & Safety Executive's REACH web page
• http://www.reachcentrum.eu/ - offers advice and training on REACH. ReachCentrum was created in June 2006 by Cefic (the European Chemical Industry Council) to help companies all through the value chain to prepare and implement REACH.

ECOBA is leading the coal fired power station products REACH registration process for the UK. More information about the various consortium dealing with REACH is available from ECOBA REACH web page on http://www.ecoba.com/reach_ccps.html.