EU REACH – Revised Guidance Document Published by ECHA

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has updated the guidance document on requirements for substances in articles. The document has been edited following the judgement of the Court of Justice of 10 September 2015. The Court of Justice ruling clarified its opinion that the requirements of REACH Article 33 should be applied at the level of the 'simple' article, rather than at the aggregate level of the 'complex' article.

http://echa.europa.eu/view-article/-/journal_content/title/guidance-on-substances-in-articles-updated

The Court of Justice ruling disagreed with the interpretation of an article as described in the guidance documents produced by the ECHA in 2011. In that document, the guidance was that the duty to notify and provide information laid down in the regulation applies only if the substance of very high concern exceeds 0.1% in the entire article.

Following the publication of the guidance documents, several countries expressed the view that where a complex article was constructed from several final components, then the component would be an article in its own right. The ruling by the EU Court of Justice supports this interpretation on an article.

The ruling, therefore, required that the guidance provided by ECHA needed to be revised to be aligned with this definition of the 'article.’

This update of the guidance document removes those references in the document which are not aligned with interpretation of the ruling of the EU Court of Justice. A fully revised guidance on requirements for substances in article will be published in 2016.

A copy of the current updated version of guidance document is available on the ECHA website via the link below:

http://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/13632/articles_en.pdf