The European Commission’s chemical regulatory arm, REACH, has voted to amend its annexes with specific requirements that will look at what kinds of substances are being placed on the market as nanomaterials and in what quantities.
Nanomaterials are currently covered by the definition of a ‘substance’ in REACH, but there are no explicit references to nanomaterials in the regulation.
In the current regulation, nanomaterials have the same obligations as other substances, such as the requirement to provide information about the supply chain, and registration if they are manufactured in quantities of one tonne or more.
“The Commission is currently modifying some of the technical provisions in the REACH Annexes,” the European Commission announced on the Europa website.
“REACH always applied to nanomaterials but did not contain specific provisions for them.
"Therefore companies often did not know how to register substances in nanoform.”
The new requirements should ‘significantly clarify’ registration requirements for nanomaterials, said the Commission, and the aim is to fill the current knowledge gap on such substances.
“We will also know more about their basic characteristics, how they are being used, how they must be handled safely, what risks they potentially pose to health and the environment and how these risks are adequately controlled,” said the Commission.
The draft regulation will be scrutinised by the European Parliament and European Council for three months before it is adopted by the Commission.
Nanomaterials that are classified as hazardous (under Regulation 1272/2008 on Classification, Labelling and Packaging - CLP) must be classified and labelled, whether they are substances in their own right or special forms of another substance, such as nano titanium oxide, commonly used in sunscreens.
