REACH

REACH stands for the Re­gis­tra­tion, Eval­u­ation, Au­thor­isa­tion and Re­stric­tion of Chem­ic­als. This new EU reg­u­lat­ory frame­work for Chem­ic­als cent­ral­ises and sim­pli­fies chem­ic­als le­gis­la­tion throughout Europe and entered in­to force on 1st of June 2007.

Chem­ic­als in volumes of 1 t/a or more must only be man­u­fac­tured or im­por­ted if they have pre­vi­ously been re­gistered and eval­u­ated. Par­tic­u­larly haz­ard­ous ma­ter­i­als have to un­der­go an au­thor­isa­tion pro­cess.

Sub­stances with prop­er­ties of very high con­cern may be sub­ject to au­thor­isa­tion.

The European Chem­ic­als Agency (ECHA) pub­lishes a list of sub­stances that may re­quire au­thor­isa­tion.

This list is known as the can­did­ate list. This list is reg­u­larly up­dated and ex­pan­ded. Sub­stances that be­come sub­ject to au­thor­isa­tion are lis­ted in Ap­pendix XIV of the REACH Reg­u­la­tion.

These sub­stances can­not be placed on the mar­ket or used after a giv­en date, un­less an au­thor­isa­tion is gran­ted for their spe­cif­ic use or the use is ex­emp­ted from au­thor­isa­tion.

REACH provides that in­form­a­tion is com­mu­nic­ated from the man­u­fac­turer via the dis­trib­ut­or to the user, and vice versa. One of the most im­port­ant in­stru­ments for this are the safety data sheets.

Safety data sheets must com­ply with the REACH Reg­u­la­tion from 1 June 2007 on­wards. Ex­ist­ing safety data sheets, however, do not need to be mod­i­fied auto­mat­ic­ally.

Once re­gis­tra­tion is com­plete, ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion is in­cluded in the safety data sheet (e.g. the re­gis­tra­tion num­ber); if ne­ces­sary, an "ex­ten­ded safety data sheet" is drawn up which in­cludes ex­pos­ure scen­ari­os

Down­stream users have to in­form their sup­pli­er if they have new in­form­a­tion on the haz­ards of the sub­stance or the risk man­age­ment ad­vice is not ap­pro­pri­ate.

Our sup­pli­ers are work­ing to­ward re­gis­tra­tion of the sub­stances that are with­in the scope of REACH. In­ten­ded uses, our sup­pli­ers have iden­ti­fied, should be covered by re­gis­tra­tion.

You as a down­stream user are en­titled to provide in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing the uses of a sub­stance, which en­ables the re­gis­trant to in­clude these uses in the chem­ic­al safety as­sess­ment. Th.Gey­er as a dis­trib­uter will pass this in­form­a­tion to the next act­or up the sup­ply chain. If “iden­ti­fed uses” are re­garded as safe after the chem­ic­als safety as­sess­ment, they will be in­cluded in the re­gis­tra­tion dossier.

The im­ple­ment­a­tion of the REACH Reg­u­la­tion is of ex­treme im­port­ance for the Th. Gey­er Group. As a dis­trib­ut­or, we are aware of the ob­lig­a­tions arising from com­mu­nic­a­tion with­in the sup­ply chain.

Our man­u­fac­tur­ers will ar­range re­gis­tra­tion of the uses for which our man­u­fac­tur­ers' sub­stances are in­ten­ded. Cer­tainly, our man­u­fac­tur­ers are not aware of all pos­sible uses. We of­fer you the op­tion of shar­ing your uses with us, so that we can pass this in­form­a­tion on to our pre-sup­pli­ers. A ques­tion­naire is avail­able for this. The ques­tion­naire is based on the sys­tem de­veloped by the European Chem­ic­als Agency ECHA, which struc­tures the cur­rent dif­fer­ent uses of sub­stances and pre­par­a­tions in­to the vari­ous in­dus­tri­al sec­tors and stand­ard­ises the de­scrip­tions of these uses. This "Use Descriptor Sys­tem" is based on five sep­ar­ate cat­egor­ies. Each cat­egory has pre-defined descriptors (use de­scrip­tions) that, in com­bin­a­tion with each oth­er, al­low a brief de­scrip­tion of the use.

The five main cat­egor­ies are:

• Sec­tor of Use (SU)
• Chem­ic­al Product Cat­egory (PC)
• Pro­cess Cat­egory (PROC)
• Art­icle Cat­egory (AC)
• En­vir­on­ment­al Re­lease Cat­egory (ERC)

In­form­a­tion on this sub­ject can be found on the In­ter­net. We re­com­mend:

ECHA info for Chapter R.12: Use descriptor sys­tem (ex­tern­al link)

If you wish to share your uses with us, please down­load the Ex­cel file be­low to your sys­tem. When com­plet­ing the Ex­cel file, please bear in mind the fol­low­ing:

You MUST in­sert your cus­tom­er num­ber and our art­icle num­ber. If any data is miss­ing, we will be un­able to pro­cess your in­form­a­tion and we can´t com­mu­nic­ate the data with­in the sup­ply chain.. If you use one art­icle for mul­tiple uses, one row must be com­pleted for each use. Please sent the com­pleted file to holtmann@thgeyer.de.

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