In October 2005, ERMA New Zealand initiated a consultation on a proposal for a system of managing so-called Chemicals of Concern. As part of this consultation, two workshops, organised in partnership with the NZ Chemical Industry Council, were held in Auckland and Wellington during December 2005. Consultation on Chemicals of Concern closed on 3 February 2006.
The Chemicals of Concern concept was incorporated into the framework for group standards by way of a group standard condition. This condition proposed that when a hazardous substance containing a Chemical of Concern was deemed approved under a group standard, the manufacturer or importer of the substance was required to notify ERMA New Zealand, providing information on:
- the name of the substance, and
- the identification and concentration of the Chemical of Concern present in the substance.
A number of submissions were received on the proposal and further discussions were held with an industry working group. As a result of this consultation, ERMA New Zealand proposes not to proceed with a Chemicals of Concern notification within the group standards framework.
The key findings from this consultation concerning the group standards notification condition were:
- Notification would impose unnecessary and onerous demands on industry for only limited benefits. For example, many companies handle or use hundreds, if not thousands, of different raw materials or products and the work involved in obtaining and collating exact composition data on these would be significant.
- Exact compositional data can be difficult to obtain, especially for the more generic ingredients such as surfactants, and complex substances such as resins.
- Enforcement of the requirement will be quite impractical because of these problems with composition information.
- The information provided would be of relatively low quality due to gaps, overlaps, and duplication. For example:
- importers will not necessarily know in which types of products their raw materials are to be used;
- substances containing the chemicals may be classified under different group standards by the importer and manufacturer and therefore reported twice (e.g. a substance sold as a surfactant and then used in paint manufacture);
- duplicate reporting will occur for substances which are simply repackaged by the manufacturer (possibly after simple blending and/or dilution with water or other solvents).
- The requirement makes no allowance for differing levels of risk associated with different uses for example, many of the chemicals used for resin manufacture are effectively 'locked up' in the finished product.
- The system will not pick up low concentrations of these chemicals in substances which are classified as non-hazardous, or those present in manufactured articles. While not directly hazardous, these low concentrations can still be significant sources of releases to the environment for chemicals which are persistent and bioaccumulative.
ERMA New Zealand will continue to evaluate the concept of Chemicals of Concern under the broader activity of its Hazardous Substance Reassessment Programme.