The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is falling short of its obligation to disseminate information on chemicals registered under the EU toxic chemicals legislation REACH. Information on just 180 chemicals has been published out of some 6000 chemicals registered under the regulation.

Today ECHA announced the decision of its Executive Director Geert Dancet that it will start to automatically disseminate information on chemicals after 1 December 2010 while substances registered by 30 November 2010 (the first deadline for registration under REACH) will be disseminated only after 1 March 2011 without prior communication with chemical manufacturers and suppliers.

Vito A. Buonsante, health and environment lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “One of the aims of REACH is to increase transparency and allow citizens to know about the information on chemicals they are exposed to. At last ECHA will start to disseminate information of chemicals, a task that is long overdue. Moreover, ECHA will have to dramatically improve the quality of the data disseminated which is incredibly poor.”

REACH obliges ECHA to make information on chemicals publicly available over the internet unless it may harm the commercial interest of the company that registers the chemical. However, only 180 substances have had information published against about 6000 substances that have been registered and a lot of data is missing.

ClientEarth calls for a thorough and timely implementation of the dissemination requirements under REACH. In particular:

That the data held by ECHA is immediately and automatically published in the database;

That ECHA seeks to improve the quality of the dissemination website and of the data disseminated which currently includes less information than the old ESIS/EINECS database;

That all the data included in the Safety Data Sheet is disseminated in accordance with Article 119(2) of REACH;

That substances for which a confidentiality request has been accepted have the reasons for the lack of data presented clearly stated;

The goal of REACH is to increase and improve the quality of the data on chemicals used in EU markets and it is ECHA’s responsibility to guarantee the quality and the timeliness of the data submitted.

ENDS